The House of Fëanor : Little Pity
by cycas
Summary: "I have had a message from the lady Nienna," the High King said to them all. "The Valar have come to a decision about the case of the House of Fëanor. " The last story in the Return to Aman series which tells of Maglor's return with Elrond.
1. Chapter 1:To the Halls of Mandos

Notes:

[Earlier stories in the Return to Aman series have established that Maglor sailed to Aman with Elrond, Frodo and Bilbo, has reconciled with most of his family, that the House of Fingolfin has recently been permitted to return from the Halls of Mandos, and that Elrond has organised an appeal to the Valar for the return of the House of Fëanor. Celebrimbor was allowed to return, but at the start of this story, the Valar are still discussing the return of the rest, and the matter of the Oath is not settled.]

* * *

It was mid-afternoon in Elrond's low white house that looked out East from the Tol Eressëa clifftop towards vanished Middle-earth. The spring day was starting to grow cooler.

Elrond had received a courteous yet urgently-worded message from the High King Finarfin, inviting him to come to Tirion as swiftly as could be to take counsel. No further detail were given. He turned the message over in bafflement. It was very brief.

"What do you think he wants?" he asked Maglor, who happened to be passing with Bilbo when the High King's messenger arrived.

Maglor and Bilbo were on their way out to meet with Fingon, with whom Bilbo had struck up a friendship which had grown out of an increasingly over-complicated game of riddles. Elrond, Celebrían and most of the residents of their house had all found polite reasons not to participate in the game, though Sam Gamgee occasionally joined in, and when he did, usually won. Maglor did not make riddles, but seemed to enjoy suggesting new and increasingly arcane rules.

Maglor peered at the letter over Elrond's shoulder. "No idea," he said, shrugging. "But whatever it is, he's being private about it. That's his own hand-writing and his personal seal, not the royal one."

"I suppose I'd better go and find out," Elrond said.

. . . . . .

When Elrond came to the white city of Tirion two days later, the sun was sinking towards the wide plains of Valinor. The stables behind Finarfin's house near the crest of the hill had a clear view west to the sunset, over the the meadows that spread out wide and fair from the foot of the hill of Tirion. Elrond paused for a moment after leaving his horse to look down at the faint mist that had risen across the plain, which caught the amber light and shone. Here and there, faint shapes outlined through the mist showed scattered farms, barns and houses.

White birds were wheeling across the grasslands, crying in shrill clear plaintive voices. Somewhere not far away inside the city, someone was playing on a flute, keeping time with the voices of the birds and weaving them into their music.

As the sun came down and touched the horizon, voices from lower down in the city near the gates lifted in song. It was not an organised choir, as it would have been in Valimar, nor singers making complex yet unplanned harmonies, as it would have been in Alqualondë. It was only people who were all singing the same song at the same moment, to wish the Sun well as she departed. As Elrond went up into the house, someone joined in the music playing on a trumpet, prompting a burst of distant laughter.

When he came into Finarfin's house, Elrond found that he was far from being the only person summoned by the High King to this meeting. Galadriel, Angrod, Angrod's wife Eldalótë and Orodreth were there already. Once Elrond had arrived, Finarfin called for Finrod, Celebrimbor, Fingolfin, Anairë, Lalwen and Turgon who were all living in the city.

It was as Orodreth commented cheerfully to Elrond as they waited for the last few people to arrive, something of a family reunion, though looking at Finarfin's serious face, Elrond himself might have said 'council of war'.

He wondered why they had not invited Gil-galad. Idril and Finduilas, he knew, were away from Tirion, travelling together in the woods in the far south of Valinor.

It occurred to him that everyone there, apart from himself, had been born in Valinor before the rising of the Sun, and all but Anairë, Galadriel and her father had died in Middle-earth.

It was a rather daunting company, seen in that light, and he wondered wryly if this was how it had felt to be Aragorn, come to take counsel in Rivendell with friends and kinsmen thousands of years older than himself.

It would have been good to tell Aragorn about that: it would have amused him to hear of his ancient Elvish foster-father feeling unsure as the youngest in the room. But now Círdan had left Middle-earth at last, there were no letters sent across the Sea any more.

Aragorn must be old now, old even in terms of the long lives of the Edain. But surely, surely even now, Elrond would still know if Aragorn had died? He could still faintly sense that Arwen lived, the faintest thread of connection, thin almost to the point of breaking, but not broken, not yet...

As soon as Celebrimbor, the last to arrive, had come into the High King's house, Finarfin took them all into a long meeting-room. Tall windows between slender white marble pillars looked out over the gardens where blue dusk was darkening to full night and the stars were blooming into life one by one. The moon had not risen yet, but the stars and the faint shine of the people in the room gave more than enough light to talk by.

Elrond took a seat between Celebrimbor and Galadriel.

"I have had a message from the lady Nienna," the High King said to them all. "An unofficial message, at the moment. The Valar have come to a decision about the case of the House of Fëanor. They are going to agree to release our brother and his children from the Halls of Mandos and allow them to return to life."

"Finally!" Fingolfin said with a fiercely triumphant smile. "About time too!"

"What took so long?" Celebrimbor asked, more cautiously.

The Valar had been debating the subject for more than fifty years of the Sun, since Fëanor's kin had come together to appeal for his return. Elrond had begun to wonder if they were ever going to reach a decision at all.

"Yavanna, Námo, Irmo, Vairë, Tulkas, Nessa and Aulë were against it," Finarfin said. "I am told that Manwë did not wish to overrule them."

Lalwen snorted. "There _are_ people he won't ignore or overrule if the fancy takes him, then," she said. "Or perhaps the fancy didn't take him this time."

Finarfin gave his sister a quelling look. "I understand that Aulë has been long in doubt, and that now, Nienna has won over his opinion to speak for pity for the House of Fëanor. That tips the balance."

Celebrimbor let out a long sharp breath. "When?" he asked urgently.

"Another month," Finarfin said to him gently. "We have a little time to prepare. But Nienna feels the end is now no longer in doubt. She has sent to us to give us warning. And so, I have called you all here to take counsel, for this is a great change to the affairs of all the Noldor and I think it best that we discuss it while there is still a little time. Lord Námo is considerably put out, I imagine. He foretold that Fëanor would remain in his Halls until the breaking of the world."

"I weep for Námo," Fingolfin said, with considerable satisfaction.

"As do we all," Finarfin said, unruffled.

That was the nearest that Elrond had heard Fingolfin or Finarfin come to criticism of the Valar since Fingolfin had returned to life, shortly after the Ban of the Valar had been withdrawn from Galadriel, and to everyone's surprise, from Maglor too. Fingolfin did not complain openly about his own long stay in the Halls of Mandos, though Fingon did.

Finrod grinned wickedly. "Elrond has disrupted Námo's foresight, coming to Aman and so politely requesting the return of people who we Elves had given up for lost long ago! That's Men for you."

" The mind of Ilúvatar concerning us is not known to the Valar ," Elrond quoted innocently.

Galadriel laughed. "I keep meaning to make you a cloak pin or a banner with those words upon it, Elrond!" she said. "It should be the motto of your house!"

"The tales of Men all have at least a dozen endings, and all of them contradicting," Elrond said smiling. "My grandsire Tuor says that there are few enough of us in Aman that he doesn't want to lose one. It's good to know that I am still not quite counted as an Elf entirely!"

"Never!" Galadriel said. "But I hope you know what you are doing. We have followed your counsel this far, and now we follow you still, as we step into the unknown. We wait to find if we have stepped over the cliff, or into the fire, or only onto some new and unexplored path. "

Elrond shrugged. There was no reassurance he could give about Fëanor, who he had never met, but he was inclined to think that Fëanor's family were overcautious, remembering too well those unimaginably distant days when the worst of all possible concerns had been a family argument.

"There is only one way to find out what Fëanor will choose to do next," he said, instead. "Wait and watch."

. . . . . .

"Well, you can't possibly bring all of them,Celebrimbor," Finrod said, leaning forward earnestly over the long dark polished table. The surface reflected as if it were a dark pool, and a faint light shone in his face and glimmered in his bright hair. "There must be sixty thousand people in the Fëanorian Quarter, at the least. It's not practical. "

"There are sixty-six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven." Celebrimbor said calmly. "And those people of the outlying farms and villages who consider their allegiance lies with my House too. I can provide a count of those if you require it. But I cannot command them not to come to see my grandfather return from the Halls of Mandos."

He looked at Finrod's pained expression, which mirrored that of his father the king rather closely at that moment, shrugged, and elaborated.

"I can't command them because most of them will not listen to me, if I tell them something they don't want to hear. Not in the matter of my grandfather."

"It is your House," Finarfin said mildly.

"Yes. But there are factions within it, you see," Celebrimbor said, his fine-featured face earnest. "First, there are those who owed allegiance to my father, or to Celegorm, who turned to me in Nargothrond, those who turned against my uncles at the Havens of Sirion to fight for me, and most of the people of Eregion. Their children and their friends too. These are my people. I can command them to stay in Tirion, and they will do it, even if they don't like it. Perhaps ten thousand of them I can speak to and hold to my word without question.

"The people of the second faction are those who fought at Doriath, or at the Havens and did not turn their coats there, but followed my uncles to the end. They will follow me if I am the only choice they have, but I am not fool enough to think they will listen to me if they know that Fëanor and Maedhros are returning. Some of them will listen to Maglor, but most of Maglor's own people died in Dagor Bragollach.

"And then, there are those who died in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, or in a thousand skirmishes and battles before that, and their spouses and their children and their friends. Their position is less clear. I would say at the very most, forty thousand of them might be persuaded to wait and see — with luck. It might be less.

"That is, if you allow me Maglor's assistance, and if he agrees to help. If you want me to try to do it alone, I doubt I can hold half that number. Maglor's people certainly won't listen to me if they get an idea that Maglor would want them to do anything different."

Finrod sighed and nodded. "You have a point. Ever since Maglor returned to Aman, he has been very much present at every meeting I have had with the Fëanorian Quarter, even though he has not actually attended a single one himself in person."

Celebrimbor said, "They'll listen to him — if you think he'll tell them to stay put. I'm not sure myself if he would do that."

"Maglor is not seeking trouble," Elrond said quietly. "I'm sure he will obey the king."

"Are you?" Galadriel asked with considerable scepticism, leaning back in her chair elegantly with her golden eyebrows raised. "I suppose there is a chance he might, if you asked him to, Elrond."

Celebrimbor looked uncomfortably at her. "If we begged my grandmother Nerdanel to speak to them too, perhaps... But even then, that will still leave at least six thousand who are either of the second faction or will choose it for the sake of friends or kin or personal loyalty to my grandfather. We will be fortunate indeed if Nerdanel, Maglor and I can hold them. They are not Maglor's people or mine, and Nerdanel has never called herself their leader. They owed their allegiance to Maedhros, and to my grandfather. And though my grandfather died before the rising of the Sun, I believe they will think of him and remember old loyalties." He grimaced. "Always our trouble, I suppose. To be constantly looking back, where Dwarves or Men look forward."

"Six thousand Noldor is an army," Finarfin said quietly. "That could be very dangerous."

"It might be far more than that," Celebrimbor agreed. "Certainly an army. An experienced army too, containing a good number of kinslayers."

"Piffle," Lalwen said. "We're past the point of worrying about kinslayers, I hope." She was of course a kinslayer herself, as was her brother Fingolfin and Celebrimbor too. All of them had fought at Alqualondë.

"I could, I suppose, bring my own people with me too, for balance, or you can bring yours, and I could leave mine in Tirion..." Celebrimbor grimaced and shook his head.

"We're supposed to be at peace," Lalwen said. "Wasn't that the point of that great festival that Finrod organised? Wasn't that the point of putting Celebrimbor in charge of the Fëanorian Quarter?"

"Celebrimbor has every right to command the people of the House of Fëanor," Finrod said. "Not to mention that I am deeply in his debt for agreeing to take charge of them, instead of leaving me to struggle!"

"Understood," Lalwen said. "And I agree with you entirely. The House of Fëanor should be in charge of its own people, who have never desired any other lords. I'd not argue with that. But are we not falling into the same trap that Celebrimbor suggests awaits the people of Fëanor, that we are looking back? Are the Noldor not one united people? It sounds as though you and Celebrimbor are half expecting the kind of argument we used to have before the rising of the Sun."

"That was so long ago," Fingolfin said, with a kind of grave finality. "Those days have passed into memory, and the Noldor are one again." He looked at Finarfin. "You have made them one, brother. If the people of Fëanor wish to go to greet their lord in peace, is that so terrible?"

Eärwen said cautiously, "That depends what we expect him to command them to do, surely?"

"And as to that, we cannot say," Finarfin said thoughtfully. "We could bring armies of our own, armoured and weaponed. We could disarm the Fëanorian Quarter, though I doubt all of them would cooperate: we'd have to search the place. That would be controversial. We could try to keep them within the walls of Tirion."

Fingolfin said "These are our own people. I am not their king, but I must ask: if they and we are one, should we not stand together and trust each other?"

Celebrimbor said, unhappily, "If you try to hold them by force within the walls of Tirion, I can't be sure what they will do."

He hesitated for a moment, with a strained and uncomfortable expression on his face. Then he pushed his shoulders back, held his head up and met Finarfin's bright eyes. Elrond knew that expression. He had seen it on Celebrimbor's face before, in those last days in Lindon before Celebrimbor had decided to leave and go to Eregion. He had seen it too, when Celebrimbor had spoken of his father, and of Nargothrond.

"I will not be a part of that," Celebrimbor said quietly but firmly. "I will not disarm the people of my House and bid them to make themselves prisoners in Tirion. If they wish to leave and go elsewhere, even to the Halls of Mandos to greet my grandfather, they have my permission to do so, and I will go with them. All of us together. I will not tear them apart and set them at each other's throats."

He stood up pushing his chair aside, and took a step back, distancing himself from the people sitting around the table.

"I don't know what Maglor will do then. But if you give me that command, to hold them by force in Tirion, I will hold my allegiance to the High King to be made void by tyranny, and I will go to my kinsman Maglor, and ask him for his counsel. If you try to hold my people that way, you will have to hold me too."

Fingolfin, Finrod and Lalwen all began to speak at once and Elrond got hastily to his feet, unsure himself what to say or do next, but before anyone could say more than a word or two, Finarfin got up from his place of honour at the centre of the table, and walked swiftly to Celebrimbor.

"There's no need for any of that," he said, speaking quietly to Celebrimbor and Elrond more than the rest. "We are one people. If you feel they cannot be held back by reason and in peace, then I'll accept your counsel, and let them go."

"And if my grandfather takes command of them?" Celebrimbor asked him.

"I expect he will do that," Finarfin said. "But that doesn't mean a war. My brother Fëanor did a great many things apart from making war, after all."

"You did not call Maglor to Tirion to hear of this," Celebrimbor said warily.

Finarfin glanced at Elrond. "I understood that Maglor chooses not to leave Tol Eressëa," he said. "I invited Elrond to speak for him."

"Forgive me for being blunt," Elrond said, "But I fear I cannot speak for Maglor. I did not know why you wished to speak to me when I set off to come here and I have not had a chance to consult with him about this. I am his foster-son, not his keeper. And if he is indeed held to be free by the will of the Valar, like his brothers, then you should hear his voice, not mine."

"I suppose I should," Finarfin said, sighing. He rubbed his face with his hands. "But if I send for Maglor, when he has not left Tol Eressëa in over a hundred years of the Sun, then everyone will know why, and the word will be across Aman in days."

"Maglor has chosen not to leave Tol Eressëa out of consideration for the feelings of the people of Doriath and the exiles of Gondolin who were at the Havens of Sirion," Elrond said, with a nod to Turgon, who had so far sat quietly observing, but not speaking yet. "But that surely must come to an end now anyway, since his brothers are returning. You are going to have to trust him at some point. Or is it a coincidence that Fingon happens to be on Tol Eressëa so often at the moment, when I am called away? You did not call Gil-galad away from the island either, I notice. Only me. "

"Maglor is still bound by his oath," Fingolfin said, not admitting that he had sent Fingon to watch his cousin, but not denying it either.

"For now," Elrond said. "But I hope, not for much longer."

"We all hope that," Finrod said. "But you must admit, Elrond, it's a worrying thing to see someone gripped like that by any oath or spell. The Oath of Fëanor has become very dark and terrible."

Elrond looked at him. " I suppose that you would know!" he said. "Fortunate for you that the only way the Enemy could find to use your oath was to drive you to your death. "

"Ouch," Finrod said mildly. "I put my name to your appeal for the House of Fëanor, and I spoke to my father for you as you asked, O Heir of Barahir. If there is something further that you require of me, you only have to mention it."

Elrond smiled. "That was Elros. He had your ring, not me. But after all, Maglor has lived with his Oath for all the long years since the Elder Days. It's not a pleasant thing to look upon when it moves in his mind, I know. It hurts him, and I would rather see him free of it, but..."

He looked around the table at faces out of legend in some frustration.

"It is different for all of you, of course. You knew them when they were Maitimo and Makalaurë: neither oathtakers nor kinslayers. But I only ever knew them as Maedhros and Maglor; kinslayers three times over, haunted by their oath. Yet still it was clear that wasn't all that there was of them. It is a thing of shadow, yes. It turns to darkness, if it can. But it can be held back. You can hardly set watchers on Fëanor and every one of his sons forever! Or are you suggesting that you will exile them all to Tol Eressëa, or to Formenos?"

The High King winced. "Any attempt to exile them would certainly stir the hornets of the Fëanorian quarter into furious buzzing. We cannot reasonably keep them from their people."

"Our brother Fëanor has been imprisoned for well over seven thousand years," Fingolfin said. "That is, surely, enough. I want to trust them." Turgon made a face, but did not object.

"We have all agreed that it is enough," Finarfin agreed.

"It's going to come out in public soon," Turgon said, sighing. "We might as well get on and tell the people."

"Well!" Finrod said, arching a surprised golden eyebrow at him. "It seems that Turgon himself is recommending against secrecy, and he of all people is an expert on that subject!"

Turgon rolled his eyes at his friend and cousin. "It is my people who are most likely to be upset!" he said. "Well, they and the Doriathrim, but there are not many of those in Tirion. With luck, it will be a little while before they hear the news."

Elrond interrupted him, shaking his head. "I am sorry," he said. "But I am afraid that I think we should inform the Doriathrim immediately. In particular I wish to speak with my grandmother, Nimloth. I would like to bring her and Dior with us to the Halls of Mandos."

Turgon stared at him. "Elrond." he said carefully. "Have you gone quite mad? You want to bring your Doriathrim grandparents to meet their killers? The killers of their children?

"Not quite," Elrond said. "None of Fëanor's sons killed my uncles. Those that did were released from Mandos quite some time ago, having been deemed now free of malice. They were, after all, only servants, and it seems that for that reason they are considered unimportant, though they were not following any command of their lords. I have spoken with them, and so has Nimloth."

Turgon raised alarmed eyebrows for a moment, then shook his head. "But still, we have no real idea what Fëanor and his sons will do, and Celebrimbor tells us that he cannot stop an army of the House of Fëanor attending. Is this wise?"

"Why not?" Elrond said. The entire situation suddenly seemed absurd, and so he favoured the silent room filled with legendary ancient relatives with a polite yet cheerful smile.

"I already have three grandmothers, Idril, Nimloth and Nerdanel, and since I am shortly to acquire an additional honorary grandfather and a quite remarkable number of honorary uncles, I feel that they might as well all meet and get any awkwardness out of the way immediately. Maglor knows Nimloth well already. She often comes to stay with us."

The alarmed silence was broken by Fingolfin laughing. "Of course!" he said. "How could we possibly object to that? I have said to my brother Fëanor that he is still our brother, when we met in the Halls of Mandos... Brother, surely you will not object? Elrond is of my House and Turgon's, on one side, but considering how all of this began, if he wishes to be of the House of Fëanor and the House of Thingol of Doriath too, how could that be anything but a good thing?"

Finarfin's serious expression warmed into a smile. "Elrond is of my House, too," he pointed out. "He is my grandson by marriage. The trouble among the Noldor began when the personal became political. Very well then. Let us see if we can bring the circle back to its beginning, and make the political personal again. It seems we have little choice but to provide for Fëanor's people to travel to the Halls of Mandos to meet him. If we can get the people of Fëanor there in peace, then when we arrive we shall hope to be one family and not worry too much about... Well. Let's leave that and see what Fëanor will do. There's little other choice."

"I noticed you did not invite Nerdanel to this meeting either," Elrond pointed out.

Finarfin spread his hands helplessly. "I have given up inviting Nerdanel to meetings!" he exclaimed. "If she has nothing better to do, she occasionally turns up, but Eärwen and I have given up expecting her."

Eärwen said "She is working with a new alloy of bronze that I'm told is very exciting, and cannot spare time for dull matters of state, or family either, just now. I thought I'd go and tell her what we've said tomorrow, Elrond. Perhaps you'd like to come. I'm sure she'll be delighted to have a new audience to explain it to, and once she's told you all about it, she might even listen long enough to hear what I have to say."

. . . . . .

The great boom of the Tol Eressëa ferry went over with a creaking noise as they went about the rocky point, and the ferry turned as the sail moved, bringing them into full view of the quays of Alqualondë.

The shoreline south of the old Teleri city was usually clear and pale, with only a few small craft pulled up and here and there, and perhaps a few Elves wandering along the shore.

Not today. Today the white shore was dark and moving with a great mass of horses and people, and above it there were banners flying, eight-pointed rayed silver stars set on a field of gold and green, for the meadows of the Gap, and the plains of Lothlann. Maglor looked out at it, and groaned.

"How many would you say?" Elrond asked him. "A thousand? Two?"

"I would guess around one thousand, one hundred and eleven people, and exactly three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three horses," Maglor said, and laughed at the absurdity of it. There was no point lamenting the ridiculous loyalty of old friends. "That is a full Company of the Gap, with all the artificers, grooms and reserves as well. They must have made the banners just for this. I can't think what else they would need them for."

"Celebrimbor did say that he thought some people might come to greet you," Celebrian said, looking out over the side. "My goodness, look at all of them! I didn't realise he meant quite so many! And all the horses!"

"To be fair, it appears that Elior and Bregolien have brought only one company, and not all three," Maglor observed. "Celebrían, you have kindly loaned me one of your horses on many occasions. Perhaps you will allow me to loan you one of mine?"

Celebrían smiled. "Very well then. It looks like it would take ages to find a way through to collect horses from my great-uncles in Alqualondë anyway."

Frodo asked, "I thought that you had nothing left in Aman? When we first met you, Finrod gave you one of his harps, because you didn't have one!"

Maglor shrugged. "I had assumed that my people would have found other lords long ago. That they would have left the House of Fëanor behind them and not wish to be reminded of a past so full of darkness."

Elrohir said drily, "Oh yes. They all look like they have found other lords to me."

Maglor laughed. "They did! Honestly, Elrohir, they did. They served Finrod for a good six thousand years or so, ever since they returned from the Halls of Mandos. Nobody could reasonably ask for a better lord than Finrod. You know, Elior was a cook, when I first met him, making pastry in my grandfather's kitchens."

"What's wrong with being a pastry cook?" Celebrían's helper Fingaeril asked. Pastry was her own preferred speciality.

"Nothing is wrong with pastry!" Maglor said hastily. "Only Elior was tired of it and wanted to work with horses. I was half-way through arranging it when we were all sent off to Formenos. So Elior came with us, when the Darkness came, and ended up fighting for me in Beleriand. Very good at it he was, too. I was concerned that he would end up back with pastry, here in Aman though: he died in Dagor Bragollach, so there was no great reason for him to be held too long in Mandos, but he had no reputation to count on here, all his skills with horses were gained in Beleriand. That would not endear him to everyone here, and the House of Fëanor had no lords or princes left to smooth things over. But Finrod had thought of it and when Elior came back to Tirion, he had quietly arranged everything before Elior even had to go to him to ask. Very thoughtful of him, and Elior has made a great success of it. Many of those horses belong to Elior. So really, they have no reason to complain of Finrod. And then Finrod gave them to Celebrimbor, who is of their own house..."

"And now they have taken themselves back to you," Elrond observed.

"Well, neither the Valar nor Finarfin the High King shall say this time that I have called them to me by any word of power, or anger, or pride." Maglor told him.

He turned to Fingon and Gil-galad. "Bear witness, you High Kings!" he said. "I have not called them to follow me!"

Gil-galad nodded a little sternly, but Fingon shook his head, laughing.

"Yes, all right, Maglor! They came of their own accord and it wasn't your idea. Duly seen and witnessed! Though I think it's the following that Mandos considered important, not whether you asked them to. I hope my horse is in the middle of that lot somewhere. I'd hate to have to ride one of yours!"

"Oh I'm sure Bregolien can find you some flashy stallion without an ounce of common-sense that likes to prance!" Maglor began, but Fingon interrupted him.

"I'm not arguing about horses today," he said, putting one hand firmly on Maglor's shoulder. "Today we're on our way to the Halls of Mandos to meet Maedhros and his brothers, and, may the Valar help us all, your father. I'm being sensible, and so should you be. By the next moon, if we all survive, I'll argue about horses to your heart's content, but let us get this done first."

The ferry was putting in alongside the small quay that served the Tol Eressëa ferry and there was no time to argue or take offence. Maglor in any case felt disinclined to do either. He gave Fingon a grin and, without waiting for the ferrymen to bring up the gangplank, leapt down onto the quayside.

"Elior!" he said, "An entire company?"

His old captain from Beleriand strode forward to embrace him. "I only brought those who insisted on coming," he said, raising his voice over the excited clamour. "I knew you wouldn't want a fuss!"

Maglor waved a hand around at horses with manes woven with ribbons and decked with plumes, at green and silver banners, and Elves in tunics marked with stars with jewels in their hair. "And nobody could possibly call this a fuss!"

Elior gave him a fierce and entirely unrepentant grin. "We have been patient," he said. "We have reported to Finrod, and been painfully polite to the Gondolodrim, avoided all argument, and sold goods and horses at a discount to the Doriathrim, exactly as you said..."

"Exactly as you said?" Elrohir said coming up behind Maglor and giving him a look of considerable amusement. "Oh yes, they have certainly all found other lords!"

"Shush!" Maglor said to both of them, and flung an arm around his steward Bregolien in greeting.

Bregolien hugged him back, then let go and gave him a stern look. "We have put up with a great deal, and haven't answered back even once!" she said. "We have not even sent messengers to you, since you told us we must not. But now we have our honour and our prince back and very soon our... I mean the Lord Fëanor too. We've earned our banners, and a little fuss!"

Maglor told her very firmly, "Well, keep it up. We are meeting the High King Finarfin outside Tirion, I understand. There must be no arguments. Elior, Bregolien... Oh, Carnil, there you are! And Nahtanion and Nethiel of course... Telutan! You have made it back in one piece! I didn't know you had returned from Middle-earth. Maedhros will be so pleased to see you, and so am I! Anyway, all of you, this is Elrohir son of Elrond, a hero of Middle-earth. Elrohir is a prince of very nearly every great House of the Eldar, not to mention the Edain too, and he has also decided he is my grandson. It is a great honour to our House. Please find him a suitable horse. "

He sent people scurrying to find horses for Elrond and Celebrían — most of them knew Elrond already, one way or another — and the people who had come with them, and to look for Fingon's people and his horse.

"You look more yourself than you have since Beleriand!" Fingon told him, and grinned as his horse and people were found and brought over to him. Maglor grinned back as Fingon and Gil-galad mounted, and Bregolien herself brought over the horse that she had chosen for Maglor.

It was easy, so very easy, to slip back into the habit of being a prince.

Fingon had done it already, but then Fingon had gone from being High King to waiting in the Halls of Mandos. One kinslaying, almost by accident, had marred Fingon's name, and it had been almost as easily forgiven as an accident. He had passed into memory for his valour, wisdom, skill and justice, and had returned welcomed for his good-will to all. Maglor had written some of those songs himself, and he would argue with anyone that they were true and fair.

The quays of Alqualondë stretched out far to the north, and there was not a sign anywhere of bloodstains. But Fingon had not made so many bloodstains, not really. Not like the blood upon the cave-walls of Menegroth, or on the wharves at the mouth of Sirion.

"Maglor, I'm not at all sure that Bilbo wants a horse," Frodo said, laughing. Bilbo was shaking his head very decidedly at an Elf who was suggesting that he mount a chestnut horse which, while hardly tall or frisky enough to be to Fingon's taste, was still far too tall for him.

"Of course not," Maglor said, recalled from thought. "Not to ride alone, at any rate." He waved the Elf away. "Bilbo will want to go with Elrond, I expect, and then, Sam, would you mind riding with Elrohir? And perhaps you would do me the honour of riding with me, Frodo? Though if you would prefer to ride alone, Elior and Bregolien have brought at least two mounts for everyone here, and some are trained to saddles."

Of the three hobbits, it had been Frodo who had been boldest about riding the tall horses of Aman, though they were something of a challenge for him. He needed help to mount, and still preferred to use a saddle than to ride in the usual fashion of elves, with just a loop of rope to give the horse guidance.

It was, now Maglor thought of it, a little worrying that so many of the horses around them were wearing saddles. Saddles were usually used only Elves in time of war. It was easier to fight from horseback with a saddle.

"I'll ride with you," Frodo said. "I know Celebrían's horses, but I think I prefer to get to know an animal that size before I presume to try to give him directions!"

. . . . .

There was almost nobody visible on the outskirts of Alqualondë, though no doubt there were many eyes watching. Many of the tall white ships of the Teleri had put out into the channel and were riding there at anchor. You could not blame them for that: a pity they had not thought of it before.

For a brief and wistful moment, Maglor allowed himself to think of how it might have been if they had all crossed the Helcaraxë together. If they had managed to arrive in Beleriand as one great host. Surely division would have been healed by hardship in the crossing of the ice, as it had been later, in Beleriand. For all that they had not been exactly friends then, Fingon would not have let Maedhros ride into ambush, as Maglor had.

Could the Enemy have withstood his father and Fingolfin together? Might that have tipped the balance? Fingolfin had given the Enemy seven wounds. If he had been dealt seven more, then, perhaps...

No way to know.

Very likely they would all have torn one another apart upon the Ice, and nobody would have arrived in Middle-earth at all.

Maglor waved Fingon on ahead, making the signal to hold his company back, and wondered at how natural it felt to do that, even now. Then it occurred to him that probably he should have given the precedence to Gil-galad instead. Surely Gil-galad would not object, though he was still a king and Fingon was not.

But Fingon seemed disinclined to ride ahead with an entire company behind him, when he had only a handful of people of his own with him. He waved Maglor up with a careless hand, and they all rode together up the long slope that led from the quays of Alqualondë towards Tirion, Gil-galad beside Elrond, with Bilbo and Celebrían, and then Elrohir riding with Sam next to Maglor and Frodo, with Fingon on the other side, and Bregolien too, wearing a grin that shone like summer sun.

Left to themselves, Maglor's people would have sung songs of battle in Beleriand, or laments for the fallen. Either might cause trouble, so instead Maglor lifted up his voice to lead them in songs from very long ago, of trees of gold and jewels shining bright upon the shore, and reaching further back still, in praise of the stars that had shone over Cuivienen when the rest of the world had been fast asleep. Many of the riders had brought instruments, the kind one could play on horseback: flutes and recorders, trumpets, drums and small lyres. Someone had brought a violin. Maglor resolved to keep an eye on him. They had not had violins in Beleriand, they were a new invention. Maglor was fairly sure you could do a lot of damage with a violin.

He stuck to harmless songs of stars until they were well out of earshot of Alqualondë. Then they were well up the road into the green hills of Eldamar, and they had come up out of the grey shadow of the low clouds that hung over Alqualondë into golden sunlight. Larks were singing high overhead against the hazy blue sky, as long ago larks had sung over the green plains of Ard-galen.

He caught Fingon's eye.

"The Song of Glorious Battle?" Fingon suggested, which in Maglor's opinion put the blame squarely on the House of Fingolfin.

He said to Frodo, to Elrohir, Celebrian and Sam. "This is one you might not know. But you'll soon pick it up!" and he turned to call to Elior, and see the flash of his smile in answer.

The first line sung, and already the whole great company had picked up the song, the song he had made long ago as they had hunted orc-bands through the Gap, and out onto the plains of Lothlann.

They had sung it as the companies of East Beleriand, with Maedhros at their head, had ridden West towards the sunset and seen the host of Fingolfin ahead, with the sunlight shining on their armour. They had sung as they joined the hosts to hunt Morgoth's armies back to hide in Angband, and as they rode back home in triumph.

. . . . . .

Outside the walls of Tirion, Celebrimbor was waiting for them, with a company that must include the vast majority of the residents of the Fëanorian Quarter: a host, really. They were at least not wearing armour, though the shout that went up when they sighted the riders coming up through the pass of the Calacirya sounded warlike enough. They too were flying banners: many eight-pointed rayed stars, set between the Two Trees with their crescent moons, or among the dark green of holly leaves for Celebrimbor and Eregion, but there were other banners too: stars on crimson red for Maedhros, or on a field of black, for Caranthir, and there were even a few stars set in gold for Celegorm, and in the red of flames for Curufin. Above them all flew a single great banner bearing the full winged fire-flower of Fëanor himself, with its shining flames and brilliant wheel of rainbow colours.

As the riders came up out of the east, Nerdanel came out from the host and looked at them quizzically, hands on hips. She had forced her wild wiry red hair into a stern bun. It did not suit her at all, Maglor thought.

Without pausing to think too much about it, he flung an arm around Frodo, urged the horse forward with a heel (the mare responded instantly, as precisely as one could wish, he must remember to commend Bregolien) and cantered lightly towards his mother. He leaned out as he passed her, and plucked the comb lightly from her hair, so that the whole compact mass of it, released, went springing wildly outward around her freckled face.

"Makalaurë! I mean, Maglor!" she said, clutching at it. "That took ages! Now it's just a... a bush!"

"It looks much better as a bush," he told her laughing as he brought the horse around to stop at a safe distance. "Father thinks so too. You know he does!"

"You horrible, horrible son!" she cried, but she abandoned the attempt to hold her hair in place with her hands. "I'm going to ignore you entirely and greet the nice members of my family!"

She went to Elrond and Celebrían, who had dismounted with Gil-galad to greet Celebrimbor, and hugged them enthusiastically, and then Elrohir, and for completeness' sake, Fingon and (rather to their surprise) the hobbits.

By that time she seemed to have forgotten she was ignoring Maglor, because as soon as he dismounted, she rushed over and hugged him too, in an enormous cloud of wiry and disordered red hair.

By now, the sun was falling, and Elior came to ask for the order to encamp. They could, of course, have gone back into the city, but nobody was eager to do that: it was a fine evening, with the sky a clear blue and the first stars pricking into light. To go into Tirion would, as Elior said, take the shine off things. And so they set up fires and people brought out food and drink of every kind from the city: and it was not only the people of the Fëanorian Quarter that were sitting around those fires by the time the sky had fallen into full velvet darkness.

There were people who had been Finrod's people in Nargothrond, who had come with him to hunt in East Beleriand with Maedhros and with Maglor, and who had had their own shame to overcome: the people of Hithlum and Dor-lómin who had ridden with Fingolfin and with Fingon out to battle upon the green fields of Ard-Galen, the people of Dorthonion, a few of whom had survived Angrod and Aegnor, and had lived to tell the tale of how Fingon and Maedhros had re-taken their land after Dagor Bragollach, and given at least a few a breathing space to retreat.

And to Maglor's surprise and delight, there were people who had remained behind in Tirion and never crossed the sea too, and the people of Gondolin, too, at least a few of them, led by Ecthelion and Glorfindel, come to find old friends and new ones.

Maglor regretted not having brought his harp, but after all, he needed no harp to sing under the stars. Ecthelion had brought his flute, and Sam had managed to waylay the Elf with the violin and persuaded him to come and play The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late, a song that, Bilbo insisted, worked best accompanied upon the fiddle, so that all three hobbits could dance. After years on Tol Eressëa under the care of Elrond and Celebrían, all three were well enough for that despite their age.

Gil-galad, perhaps influenced by the presence of Fingolfin, Lalwen and Fingon, unbent from his usual position of alarming dignity. He had known the fathers of the fathers of the Fallohides, long ago when peace had lain on Eriador, and now, he volunteered to sing what he swore was one of their songs for the hobbits.

"The fly shall marry the humble-bee?" Bilbo said. "It sounds worse nonsense than the Man in the Moon!"

"I wouldn't let Tilion hear you say that!" Maglor said, laughing. Someone had brought bottles of wine out from the city, and they had passed several around the fires. Fingon topped up his cup.

"Perhaps I have mistranslated," Gil-galad said frowning. "The fly...flee? The one who flees, as on wings? The one who has fled? And then, I think there is a sense to 'bee' that I have not caught, implying excited voices and a sense of cheerful bustling. It is a love-song at any rate... I fear that in rendering the dialect into modern Westron I have destroyed the meaning while preserving the rhyme."

"It's not easy, pulling verse into a different language," Bilbo sympathised, wagging his head sagely. "Try giving us the original. I know the language has changed a great deal, but I'd be most interested to hear it even so."

Overhead, above the singing and the fires and the sparks that flew up from them, the stars shone eternal on a field of deepest blue. Maglor leaned back, looking up at one star in particular. Elrond, sitting next to him, caught his eye.

"Will he come?" Maglor asked him, almost under his breath.

"Yes," Elrond said, just as quietly. "Yes, he will come. Do you think..." he seemed to not know how to end the sentence.

"I don't know," Maglor said, suddenly uncomfortable again, though his Oath was still fast asleep. He had feared it would be awake and biting by now. "I won't. I promised you that."

"I know. I am only concerned about your brothers and your father... But still, if I have made a mistake, I can only find out by going on. It is far too late to turn back now."

"Your deeds will be a matter of song until the end of Arda," Maglor said, and managed a laugh. "Well, they are already, but you'll find that if this is a mistake, the songs about it will eclipse all the rest. You'll have to tell me if you find the songs a comfort. I can't say I did."

"How reassuring," Elrond said. Maglor could see the smile catch at the corner of his mouth in the starlight. "It will all work out somehow. When we started this, there was Morgoth, and there was Sauron, and now both are gone and the story's almost over. Yet here we are still, beyond the Sea under the stars."

"All's well that ends well, Sam says," Maglor told him. He had given up on his own hopes of anything ending well a very long time ago, but Elrond's hope was free of doom and wrath and oaths. It made as good a light to follow as any star.

The hobbits slept, but no-one else did that night. There was too much singing to be done.

Then in the hour before the dawn, when the stars of Varda hung blazing overhead, they heard fair voices singing far off, coming down from the North. Elrond got up, smiling and went out to greet them. They were people who long ago had lived in Doriath under the stars, who now lived wandering through the wild and wooded hills that stretched up towards distant Formenos. Leading them was Nimloth the queen, and Dior, Thingol's heir.

The joyful singing as the Doriathrim came into the Noldor camp and were greeted woke Bilbo, and he grumbled for a while, until, much to Maglor's amusement, he put a spare pillow on top of his head and went back to sleep.

. . . . . .

The sun rose red out of the east, and the long shadow of the hill of Tirion and the tall tower of Mindon Eldaliéva that stood at the crest of the hill together streamed out long and dark across the camp of the Noldor, like a long dark finger pointing west towards the golden city of Valimar, and far beyond it across the flowering plains of Eldamar, the Halls of Mandos.

As the morning mists shone across the land, silver trumpets rang out from the walls of Tirion, and the High King Finarfin rode out, with Eärwen, Finrod, Angrod and Galadriel beside him, and with Galadriel was Celeborn of Doriath, and with Finrod, Amárië of the Vanyar.

Their company was flying Finarfin's golden banners, but ahead of all of them went a great banner showing the Winged Sun of the House of Finwë.

Celeborn and Galadriel rode out smiling and invited Nimloth and Dior to come with them. Fingolfin swung up onto his great horse Rochallor, his dear friend, with whom he had returned from the Halls of Mandos, and he, Fingon, Lalwen, Turgon and Aredhel, with a company of their people beside them, fell into line behind.

Last of all, and by far the most numerous, since Finarfin's people and Fingolfin's had mostly remained in Tirion, came the people of House of Fëanor: Celebrimbor in the centre, leading the people on foot, with the horsemen spread out in two wings on either side. Maglor led the right wing. He had offered the left to Elrohir, since Elrond was to ride with Dior and Nimloth, but Elrohir had politely declined in favour of Elior, who had after all more than earned the honour.

They travelled like that for a while, singing and playing as they went, and the sound of the clear voices of that great host shook the air and echoed high into the mountains. Maglor wondered if Manwë himself had heard it, high above them on the peaks of Taniquetil, and if so what he made of it.


	2. Chapter 2 : The Artistry of Nienna

The Halls of Mandos were wide and grey and cool: decked with the storied tapestries that told the tales of Arda. They were utterly separate from the living world, with its growth and struggle and change. Pleasant enough in their way, for those who enjoyed the shade of star-shadow and the darkness of the woods. Pleasant enough for a day, for a few years of the Trees even. Míriel Þerindë had found them calming, healing, for a while.

But even she, who had chosen to pass from life to death, had grown weary of the Halls of Mandos in time, and had felt the urgent call of her living body and her skills again.

Fëanor, in life, had loved light and children and discovering things new and strange: he had loved the skills of his hand and mind and used them to the full.

To call it yearning for his body was to use too weak a word. He missed it with a passion like a flame.

He was heartily sick of the Halls of Mandos. He had been imprisoned these seven thousand years, an unwilling subject of the lordship of Námo. The halls would have seemed dull enough after so long, even for one permitted to roam them freely, but Fëanor and his sons were not permitted that. The wrath of the Valar lay on them still.

But now, at last, at last, here was a change coming.

If he chose to take it.

"It burns my heart to leave you here, Father," he said unhappily. "Are you sure you would not prefer that I stay?"

"It saddens me to see you wearing out your heart here," Finwë said. "Think of your own sons. Would you wish Curufinwë the younger to wait here in idleness for you, if he could take up his tools again?"

"No!" Fëanor said. "It has been hardest for him, of all of them, to stay here with nothing to do but think old thoughts. I would have him free to make and do and think of new things, and be with his son."

The Halls of Mandos were not made for new thoughts. It was one of many frustrating things about them.

"Well then!" Finwë said, and although in the spirit he did not really have hands or arms, any more than Fëanor had shoulders, he put his arm around his son's shoulders, all the same. "I am perfectly well here. I shall visit with your mother in the workshops of Vairë, and watch the tale of years being woven with my old friend Elwë, and we shall be content: ancient Elves with minds full of stars, walking through memory and singing songs of days long past. I have had many more years of life than you, and I have made what is in me to make: my jewels, my city, my children and my people. By staying here, I give back your mother's skills to the world, and that is a thing worthwhile in itself." He smiled. "And I must confess, I am not eager to take back the kingship of the Noldor, and judge their quarrels! You will all have to sort those out for yourselves."

"I will do better," Fëanor assured his father. "It was only that..."

"You were upset. I know. You thought yourself beset within a ring of enemies. I was not exactly happy myself," Finwë said, and laughed.

They had, of course, had this conversation before, many times over. That was what the Halls of Mandos was made for: looking back. It pushed you that way. Fëanor was used to it by now, but he still found it unpleasant. Presumably his father did not feel the same.

"Our Enemy is gone now, and time has softened all griefs and grievances," Finwë said.

"The Valar are not gone," Fëanor pointed out.

"No. But the Valar are not the Enemy."

Fëanor did not answer but looked at him sideways.

"They aren't , Fëanáro. Strange and hard to talk with, yes. Uncomprehending, too, I'll agree with that, quick to anger and rarely gifted at explaining what they are about or what their reasons are! But you don't really believe they are of evil will."

"Perhaps not," Fëanor admitted, reluctantly.

He, who had seen Thangorodrim and fought Balrogs, who had watched in horror as the Oath that he had made had been twisted by his Enemy until it betrayed his sons, one by one, into death, could no longer hold that the Valar and the Shadow were the same.

There was no point ignoring information. That only led you into error.

Finwë nodded gratefully. "Perhaps if I had known what they thought we were agreeing to, all those many years ago at Cuivienen, I might have spoken differently, or made conditions. They thought we were surrendering ourselves into their hands, to be directed and disciplined as children. We thought they were only offering light, knowledge and safety! And it was too late by the time we discovered we were not entirely speaking the same language... But they did give us the light and the knowledge and the safety, after all."

Fëanor snorted.

" Mostly , they gave us safety," Finwë corrected himself. "You were born for Valinor. You, the greatest of my children above all the rest could not have reached your full potential anywhere else. But all of you deserved a land of peace and learning. Don't start a pointless argument you can't win! Not with the Valar."

"No, Father," Fëanor said, dutifully. Finwë looked relieved.

"Don't start arguments with the Teleri either for that matter!" he said. "If you didn't teach them that the protection of the Valar was not always absolute, then the arrival of the Numenorean navy did. I imagine poor old Olwë is a little less confident in them since they abandoned everything outside the Pelóri without a single blow struck. Elwë was horrified by that, and that was after he had been killed himself, and seen his Maia wife desert his people. They aren't like us, the Ainur."

"Yes, Father," Fëanor said.

Apparently the meekness in his voice struck a suspicious note. Finwë looked at him doubtfully and shook his head. "I don't know why I keep on talking," he said. "I know perfectly well you won't pay attention to a word of it!"

Fëanor gave him a smile that, from his father's expression, looked rather more weary than he had intended. "I will," he said. "I do. But you must admit, I've heard it all quite a few times by now. Give me a little credit for not being a complete fool. I know you and Mother will be watching. I fully intend not to let you down again."

"Just... just remember that you are supposed to look after your younger brothers, not fight with them," Finwë told him. As if either Fingolfin or Finarfin was likely to need anything from their disgraced and dispossessed half-brother! Each was head of his own great House, and Finarfin was High King of the Noldor too.

Yet Finwë went on, as if Feanor were a child, "Take care of your brothers and sisters, and keep an eye on your temper, please!"

Release from the Halls of Mandos would not be freedom. It would only be a wider cage. But even that would be better than unlife until the end of Arda.

"Yes, Father," he agreed. You could not lie, in the Halls of Mandos, but agreeing to something that never would be needed was not a lie.

. . . . . .

It would not be any of the Maiar that came to them, when the time appointed came. Námo's Maiar were no longer permitted to speak with Fëanor without Námo's supervision, since Fëanor had spoken to them of his discontent, and had proved far more convincing than Námo apparently found comfortable. Probably it would be Námo himself, to send forth his prisoners just as long ago he had sent Melkor free at Manwë's command.

But in the end, it was not the Lord of the Dead who came. It was Nienna, tall and clad in veils of grey who came to the long hall where they had waited for so long. Fëanor was glad of that. If he never saw Lord Námo again, it would be too soon.

Nienna brought pity, which would have been unwelcome, except that Nienna pitied everyone, and there was nothing personal in it. Nienna had not come to them until recently. Her presence was a sign of change, and welcome for that reason, even if she was of the Valar.

Nienna arrived, not through a door, but simply by manifesting herself, and inclined her veiled head to them. Fëanor after a moment, bowed back. There was no harm in showing courtesy, and Nienna herself had done him and his sons no direct injury. Beside him, his six sons as one followed his example.

"I shall need your assistance," she said, and regarded them, her head a little on one side, her dark eyes very sharp and shining bright above the veil, despite the tears. "I must make a body for each of you, formed from the stuff of the world. This only the Ainur can easily do, or so I believe. But to shape the form to be right for each of you, I shall need you to give me the image of who you are." She seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"It has been suggested to me that I use the word 'collaboration'," she said.

Fëanor, taken by surprise, laughed. Then, remembering Finwë's words to him, he bit back a harsh reply which would have achieved little, and silenced Curufin and Caranthir with a stern look before either of them could make the same point.

"Very well," he said.

"Who shall be first?" she asked. Fëanor looked around and considered. "Maedhros," he decided.

His eldest son looked at him. His spirit still did not entirely look himself, though Fëanor was hard-pressed to say exactly how.

"I do want to leave here, you know," Maedhros said. "It wasn't that I wanted to be dead, so much as that there were so many pressing arguments for no longer being alive."

"Well, now there are pressing arguments for being alive again," Fëanor told him. "You are eldest, and must lead." He winced a little at that, and Caranthir put a hand on his shoulder, but it was true and he would do it.

"I want to see that all of you are safely gone before I leave myself," Fëanor told them. And he was not entirely sure that Maedhros would in fact leave, without his father and all his brothers to make sure he did.

He turned to Nienna. "I would speak with you, before you begin?" he asked. "In private."

Nienna bowed her veiled head and made an upward gesture with both hands. Walls sprung up around them, enclosing Fëanor and herself in a small room with his sons outside it. Unsubtle, but then the Ainur usually were.

"Maedhros will give you an image of himself that is not fair, or true," he told her bluntly. "Don't let him make himself a monster."

"I can only make him the form that he carries within himself," Nienna said gravely.

"That is utter nonsense," Fëanor told her firmly. "Aulë made the Dwarves using the same approach that you will use: I've heard about it in some detail, and I do understand the process. He had no idea what shape to make them, never having seen either Elf or Man, and so he made one up. If you cannot make a shape that looks like Maitimo, rather than whatever shape he has dreamed up and convinced himself that he deserves, then..."

"Yes?" Nienna asked, head on one side again, eyes looking deep into him.

"Then I shall know that any faint and foolish hope I might still harbour that the Valar are in the end well-meaning and only very confused about how best to achieve their ends, is entirely vain," Fëanor told her.

"Dear me," Nienna said mildly. "An appalling threat."

He looked up at her, and smiled. "You are mocking me," he said, determined. He had learned. "It doesn't matter. You are still wrong, and I am concerned for my son. If I am not mistaken, so are you. I can't imagine you want to do this less well than the best it can be done. Call on Aulë, if you need help. Or Nerdanel. My wife is a superb sculptor. She will advise you. You said 'collaboration'. So do it."

"The process used in making the Dwarves is not entirely the same," Nienna said and this time she looked genuinely thoughtful. "He made the forms without the spirit, and Eru himself shaped the spirits of the Dwarves to suit their form, which is beyond the skill of any lesser being, and certainly beyond mine. The body must match the spirit, or the spirit will revolt and will not remain within it."

"Nerdanel then," Fëanor insisted. "She made his body the first time, after all, and shaped his spirit, too."

"His spirit now is not the spirit that you shaped together," Nienna said sadly, tears running down into her veil from the corners of her eyes.

"No," Fëanor said, with, he thought, considerable patience. "And it never will be. But I am not asking you for the form of a child. I am asking for my son to have a form that fits all his life and spirit, not merely the end of it, and certainly not whatever hideous tangle of guilt and fear he has wrapped around it. He can't unwind that here. But he will one day. He was born to be well-formed and so he should be."

"Ah!" Nienna said. "Now there's a thought. I cannot ignore the form his spirit calls for, but I could, perhaps, reach across time and gather together threads that have snapped, a few of them, at least. And it is in his name. Names shape the world, too. That might do well." She looked at him with an understanding in her eyes that was deep as the sea, and although Fëanor would not admit it, even to himself, frankly terrifying. "A good idea, and not only for him. I will bear it in mind."

"Thank you," Fëanor said as she brought her hands down and the walls folded into the floor.

"All sorted out," he said cheerfully to his sons, as if there were some last-minute hitch in the arrangements for some trip away from Tirion when they were children. "Come now, Maitimo."

"Maedhros," Maedhros said and stepped forward, serious-faced. "I haven't been Maitimo in three Ages." Fëanor knew that, of course, but he had hoped the name might help. But perhaps it was still too soon for that.

. . . . . .

The side door of the Halls of Mandos, where Elves returned to life usually let out directly into the rose-garden outside. There, Maglor had been told, the returned found clothing and food, left in a small house outside the walls by the charitable of Eldamar.

But on this occasion, it was generally agreed that emerging naked into the view of more than half of Tirion, now encamped all around the Halls of Mandos, might be an unwelcome ordeal (though the idea made Nerdanel at least, laugh long and loudly enough that Celebrían was overcome with giggles, and had to go away outside the garden with Nimloth.)

So they put up a tall white tent against the door to provide a degree of peace and privacy. You could, of course, hear the murmur of the many people not far away through the pale canvas walls.

Then there was some discussion as to who should wait inside the tent: a debate that Maglor won entirely by not speaking at all, but simply fixing all the others with a pointed glare until they went away. Even Nerdanel nodded, and wandered off to sketch the roses around the gardens that lay around the Halls of the Dead. Finrod showed signs of lingering, but was eventually towed away by Elrond.

When almost everyone had left, Maglor sat down to wait and then noticed Fingon waiting, quiet as a hunter, in a corner. He tried the glare on him, and was met by a level, deeply unimpressed look in return.

"Fair enough," Maglor said, and shrugged. "Do you want a game of dice?"

Maglor had lost his arm-rings twice, had won them back again and gained a cloak-pin, when the door opened, and Maedhros came out.

Maglor had prepared approximately six thousand things to say to him, and found that none of them, in the event, were right.

Instead he stared for a moment. "They made you a whole new body, but didn't give you back your hand ?"

"Hello, Maglor," Maedhros said. He looked less thin and worn and hunched than he had in those last terrible months at the end of the War of Wrath, after they had lost their last faint hope at the Silmarils, and then, even more appallingly, had regained them.

But Maglor had expected him to look at least outwardly like the brother of his youth, and he did not. He might have been the leader of East Beleriand before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, but he was not Maitimo.

Fingon, unspeaking, handed him a shirt.

"Thank you," Maedhros said to him, taking it with his single hand and pulling it on. "You look well."

"They gave me a body with two hands," Fingon said, dangerously, looking at the door that had closed behind Maedhros.

"She tried," Maedhros said. "The Lady Nienna. It wouldn't come, I'm afraid." He hesitated. "I didn't think that would bother you."

"That's not the point!" Fingon said furiously. "That is absolutely and completely not the point! We talked about this. In the Halls. You promised me you would not dwell on the past, that if I went first, you'd follow me when you got the chance."

Maedhros looked at him and the corner of his mouth curled very slightly. "Well, yes," he said. "You were terrible at being dead. I'd have said almost anything to get you to leave. Watching you pacing up and down and ranting was very tiring."

"Pah!" Fingon said. "You can't tell lies in the Halls of Mandos, I know that as well as you do!" He took Maedhros's arm, very gently and looked at where the right hand should have been, then at his face. "I thought the Valar had forgiven all of it."

Maedhros made a helpless gesture with the hand he still had. "If they have, I haven't. You can't go back. It will always be there, behind me."

Fingon shook his head, wordless.

Maedhros pulled on breeches. They had not thought to bring clothes that were easy to fasten with one hand, and Fingon had to help him with the laces.

"You can't go back," Maglor agreed, fiercely determined not to weep, since Maedhros was not weeping, though it would be a hundred times easier if he were. "You can go on though, I've found."

"What do you think I'm doing?" Maedhros demanded. "I'm here. I'd prefer that it was something from Doriath, or from the Havens that I had kept, of course. But I wasn't wounded in either of those battles."

"Fingon," Maglor said abruptly, because it was too much. "Please. Take him away. Take him to Elrond and Celebrían. Perhaps they can..." Then he remembered. "No, wait. Maedhros, our mother is out there. And Eärwen of Alqualondë. She isn't angry. I have talked to her. And Ecthelion of Gondolin. Galadriel, if you can believe that, and Celeborn of Doriath. Nimloth. Dior. Gil-galad is out there, and I promise you if you speak to him he will shake your hand and greet you as a friend. As well as half of Tirion. Most of them carrying your banners, or Father's and very delighted that you have returned."

Maedhros blinked and looked at him, shocked. "Why?"

"There has to be an end to things," Maglor said, feeling he was putting it very badly. He shook his head. "It's better , to call an end to things, than keep on... Oh, you didn't listen to me before. Why would you now? I should have asked Elrond to wait. Or Finrod. He'd find the right words."

Maedhros gave him another startled look.

"No, you shouldn't," Fingon said, watchful. "You have done this. Not Finrod, and not even Elrond. You came back and faced them all, and showed them who you are."

"Did you just say that Finrod would put something better than you?" Maedhros said, in Maglor's view, missing the point entirely. " Finrod? " He took a long step over to Maglor, took him by the shoulder and looked down into his eyes.

"Finrod has been helpful," Maglor told him staring back defiantly into Maedhros's eyes, with the hint of familiar flame burning bright behind them. "He is very forgiving."

"Well, I know that, of course, but I never thought I'd see the day when Maglor deferred to Finrod on a matter of words," Maedhros said, scrutinising him closely. "Or to young Elrond, either!"

Maglor laughed, a laugh that sounded harsh in his own ears. "He's hardly young any more."

"I suppose not." Maedhros frowned. "Still, it's not like you."

"How would you know? You threw yourself into the fire to get away from me, thousands of years ago. People change." Maglor twisted away from him. "No need to look into my eyes for darkness. There's nothing hiding there that isn't in yours as well."

Fingon said, warning, "Maglor," and Maglor caught himself, remembering that he owed Maedhros for Losgar, and for Thangorodrim as well, and that he had meant to arrange things so that Maedhros would not have to deal with anyone pushing blame at him.

"Sorry," he said unhappily to both of them. "I didn't mean that."

"I can honestly say that of all my reasons, getting away from you was not even on the list," Maedhros said. "You can stop feeling guilty about that right now. You weren't the reason and could not have stopped me. Don't be such a fool."

"Says the person who made himself a body with only one hand," Maglor pointed out. "It's not as if you aren't deadly with the left! Honestly, what were you thinking? 'I'll make myself a body that can kill people but not tie my breeches'? How does that help?"

Maedhros looked terrifyingly furious for a moment, then suddenly he laughed. "You make an excellent point," he said. "I didn't think. It wasn't planned. I don't think it works like that. It's just how I came out." He looked down at his remaining hand. "At least it isn't scarred."

"Does it hurt?" Fingon asked practically.

Maedhros thought about it, and stretched, moving his arms and shoulders. "No."

"Well, that's something, anyway," Fingon said. "No doubt you'll have a cunning hand of metal made. But I don't intend to stand here and watch you two pushing guilt about and talking around each other until your brothers arrive too and we end up with a shouting match. No wonder you were such disasters after I died and left you to get on with things! It's been thousands of years. Everyone but you has come back to life long ago. To the amazement of all, including me, Maglor has been convincingly harmless since he arrived in Aman with Elrond, and very nearly everyone has seen it and decided that we should all reunite and go on. Get to the point, Maglor."

"Eärendil is out there," Maglor said. "Vingilot is anchored in the sky. With the Silmaril." He felt his Oath rouse in his mind and bite harder at the words. He braced himself and ignored it. He must not let it colour his thought. It pulled at Maedhros a little too, though, he thought, not as insistently, at least not yet. Maedhros's body had not been in Middle-earth, where Morgoth's essence still ran like a thin dark thread through the very rocks, of course. Perhaps that helped.

"I'm not going to take it, and nor are you. Nor our brothers, or our father. He has some idea that it can break the Oath. I don't think it can be done. You tried. We tried. We must make them wait. The Oath doesn't say we can't wait. There is no urgency. We took the two. The third may come in time. But we aren't going to kill for it."

The Oath bit into him again, and he ran out of words. He could have quelled it with the harp, but the harp could be a weapon, too. Not worth the risk, to carry harp or sword, for all that both were habit and not having the sword upon his belt felt odd. He pushed it back, writhing and hideous.

"Easier, now," Maedhros said, wonderingly. Fingon was looking at both of them doubtfully

"Yes. Much. You can." He set himself to watch the Oath. If he was looking at it, it could not move behind his thought and push it out of shape.

"Can I?" Maedhros said heavily. "Very well then. We tried my way. Now we'll try yours. If the others agree, at any rate."

"No." Maglor said, and pushed the Oath back harder, with an effort, running cool rounded notes through memory in his mind until it stilled. "Make them!" he said. "We could have done it at Losgar, if I had had more sense, before it became strong. We can do it now."

Maedhros rubbed his neck with his hand and did not answer.

Fingon said, "This is not a problem that the House of Fëanor has to solve alone. You have friends, you have allies, and the Enemy is gone beyond the world. Stop looking so gloomy! You have very nearly won."

Maedhros looked at him and laughed. "And will the House of Fingolfin ever stop riding to our rescue, even now beyond six thousand years?"

"I doubt it," Fingon told him grinning. "My father, me, Aredhel and Elrond, anyway. Turgon and Idril are less enthusiastic. But Turgon came to join our alliance, after all."

Maedhros frowned. "That was before the Havens."

"Elros would say: 'so try to do better,'" Maglor reminded him. "I've talked to Turgon."

"You've talked to everyone!" Fingon said. "He has, Maedhros. Finrod could not have been more conciliatory. A very curious sight it was too, and I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. I had a theory at one point that Elrond was putting something in his wine..."

"I wish Elrond would put something in your wine!" Maglor told him reprovingly. " Maedhros, are you going to wait for the rest, or do you want to go and meet people? Elrond wants to see you, but he's far from alone."

"I'll wait for the rest," Maedhros said. "There is, as you said, no urgency."

. . . . . .

Celegorm was next, then, and somewhat to Maglor's relief, Caranthir arrived very shortly afterwards. He had always got on better with Caranthir than Celegorm.

"I don't know why you two took so long," Caranthir said rather curtly, when Celegorm raised an eyebrow at his swift arrival. "It was very simple. Show her who you are, she makes a body, you get into it. How hard is that?"

"Not hard for you, apparently," Maedhros said. "I found it more complicated, myself." Caranthir looked at the place where the missing hand should be, and nodded abruptly.

"Some of our bodies require more artistry in creation than others," Celegorm suggested, and received a brotherly elbow in the ribs.

Amras was next. "What happened to Curufin?" Celegorm demanded.

"I don't know!" Amras said. "He went off before she came and called for me. I thought he'd be here already." He hastily pulled on a shirt and breeches, and began to rummage through a pile of tunics.

"There are some belts," Maglor told him, pointing them out, and Amras looked up, put the pile of tunics down very carefully, came over and put his arms around Maglor instead.

"I'm very glad that you are still alive," he told Maglor quietly.

Maglor hugged him back. He should be worried, still, and yet his face badly wanted to smile, and so he did. "There were times I wasn't glad," he admitted. "But today I am."

Amrod arrived before Curufin did. "I saw him on the way through," Amrod reported. "He says he's talking to Nienna and will be along once he's finished."

"Will he!" Celegorm said, pacing. "Hasn't he had long enough in the Halls of Mandos?"

"We have time," Maglor told him. "There is no urgency. Father isn't here yet."

"Wait," Maedhros said quietly. Fingon raised his eyebrows at Celegorm, who nodded and sat down again.

. . . . . .

In the afternoon sun a good distance away from the gloomy walls of the Halls of Mandos, Elrond, Celebrían and the hobbits were eating lunch with Nimloth, Dior, Finrod, Amárië, and Edrahil. They had been joined by Eärendil and Elwing too, who had arrived in Vingilot and descended on great white wings to greet their son, much to Bilbo's delight. Eärendil was carrying the Silmaril, Elrond knew, but it was hidden, for the time being. Elrond's father and mother looked quite ordinary, at the moment. They could have been any man and woman eating lunch together, sitting quietly on the grass.

Left to himself, Elrond would not have wanted food, but the company of hobbits made a missed meal impolite, and so they sat and ate, and made conversation.

After a while, an unexpected guest appeared, sat down rather heavily between Bilbo and Frodo, and helped himself to cheese, beer and bread.

"Good afternoon, Gandalf!" Bilbo said. "I didn't know you were coming here too!"

"Good afternoon!" Gandalf said. "This is an event unthought-of since the Elder Days, after all. I hope I'll be excused for intruding."

"Old friends are always welcome," Elrond said smiling.

"That's good to hear!" Gandalf said. "We have kept our people away as much as possible, since the Three High Kings have made their views very clear that this affair is a matter for the Elves." He nodded politely to Finrod, who as his father's representative, nodded politely back.

"Yes, we noticed," Elrond said. "And I wondered who to thank for such restraint. I thought it might be you."

"I heard that you and Bilbo spoke uncommonly bluntly to the Vanyar, when you were in Valimar," Gandalf said, his bristling eyebrows twitched together in amusement.

"There's no point beating about the bush," Bilbo told him. "I stand by what I said. The Valar left Sauron to the hobbits, and that was a quite ridiculous decision!"

"Ridiculous! I daresay that it was," Gandalf said "But in the end it worked, and nothing sank into the sea. Things have been known to come to far darker ends."

"They certainly have," Elrond said. "And I will say it again. We owe you thanks for helping us change the ending of this part of the story."

Gandalf looked at him with eyes that saw uncomfortably more than Elrond would have liked, but if he saw that Elrond was uncertain, he did not say so.

"I am a great admirer of the work of Fëanor myself," Gandalf said. "And I may say that the Valar have learned a good deal from their dealings with the House of Finwë. One reason why they sent us to Middle-earth in the form of Men, I and my colleagues. To make it easier to understand, and harder to overrule. It is hard, when you look down from a great height, to see how things are on the ground, no matter how keen your eyes."

"I've wondered why you have not changed back to... whatever you were before." Frodo said, looking thoughtfully at Gandalf's long white beard. "You can be any shape you like, can't you?"

"And what, Frodo Baggins, makes you think that with a choice of any shape I like, I would not pick this one?" Gandalf said, bristling his eyebrows imposingly.

Sam looked at him thoughtfully, head on one side. "If I could pick any shape I liked," he said. "I'd pick a different one for each day of the week, I reckon. But if it was me doing the picking, I wouldn't pick one of 'em with a beard."

"Perhaps I should make you a beardless frog for a week and see how you like it, Master Gamgee!" Gandalf said, and laughed. "But in fact, Frodo, you have the right of it. We get used to a form, if we wear it long enough. You end up not shaping it, so much as being shaped. I've worn this form long enough that it is me, and I am it, and we are one. And so I'm no longer what I was, and never will be again, but something else. Part Man, part Maia, perhaps? An unusual thing to be, but useful in its way."

"I had not realised!" Elrond said. "In that case you should be doubly welcome; not only as an old friend, but as family too: kin to myself, my mother Elwing, Elrohir, and my grandfather Dior, of course. There are not many people who are part Man and part Maia, and most of the rest of us are here already."

Gandalf's bristling eyebrows shot up. "Are you determined to make every person in the land of Aman your relative, Elrond?" he asked, and he laughed, a great laugh filled with joy. "It is a great thing to be one of Elrond's family. I am honoured," he said.

. . . . . .

The sun was falling into the West, and the great host gathered and quietly waiting upon the plains around the Halls of Mandos had begun to make fires and settle for the evening. The shadow of the Halls of Mandos stretched out long and dark across the white tent that hid the door through which the dead were permitted to leave.

Someone should bring lamps to the tent before it became dark, and probably food and drink too. Celebrimbor appeared to possess quite inexhaustible supplies of patience and no nerves at all. He was still happily chatting with some of his jewelsmiths and Nerdanel about some new project they were planning together.

Elrond looked at them, and concluded that 'someone' should be himself. He gathered up supplies and lamps and a couple of people to help carry them. Then he poked his head into the tent, to meet shining eyes in a surprising number of faces that looked more or less like Maglor. One of them was pulling on a tunic.

And there was Maedhros, too, next to Fingon, and looking somehow much younger and less careworn than Elrond had ever seen him look, though he still had one hand missing.

"Elrond! Your timing is perfect," Maglor said, and came over to draw him inside. It struck Elrond that he looked much older than his brothers: not as the Edain look older, with greying hair or wrinkled skin, but something behind the eyes was tired and shadowed. He waved the people with the lamps and food to set them down and thanked them.

"Hello Elrond," Maedhros said, and smiled. Not, perhaps, by most people's standards the most carefree of smiles, but for Maedhros, who had usually had to work up to smiling at all, it was a very good one.

"You look so well!" Elrond told him, smiling back.

"Does he?" said someone Elrond didn't know, but from his fair hair must be Celegorm. "We've just been telling him that Nienna has made a terrible mess of him, and he should go back and complain!"

Maglor shook his head reprovingly. "Elrond, this is Celegorm, who, against stiff competition, is probably my least tactful brother. This is Curufin, and Amrod, and Amras, who is probably the most tactful..."

Amrod said indignantly, "Him and not me?"

"Definitely him and not you, Amrod," Curufin said, rolling his eyes.

Maglor went on "... and over there already with his hands already on the sandwiches is Caranthir. All of you, this is Elrond son of Eärendil, of the house of... well all of them, really, ours included, since to my continuing surprise he has chosen it."

"Of course I have chosen it," Elrond told him. "Why would I not choose to be of the house of my foster-father?"

Maglor grinned at him. "Anyway, we owe him a great debt, and if any of you are impolite to him, Celegorm, I will send you back to Mandos in a box."

Celegorm chuckled, and bowed very politely to Elrond.

The person who had been pulling on a tunic over his head had finished dressing, now. Maglor turned to him. "And this is my father. Father, this is Elrond."

Fëanor looked very much like Celebrimbor, but unlike his grandson, unlike everyone there, he did not keep his mind and spirit closed against casual intrusion. Fëanor's spirit was open and blazed furiously bright. It was like looking into the heart of a furnace. Elrond blinked, although it was not exactly his eyes that were dazzled.

"You are the son of the keeper of my Silmaril," Fëanor said to him thoughtfully.

The word 'Silmaril' resonated as he spoke it, and Elrond could feel it catch and pull on Maglor next to him, and almost everyone else there too. It came to Elrond in a frantic rush of thought that everyone around him had sworn the Oath save Fingon, and that there was no accustomed weight of a sword against his hip, because Maglor had chosen not to bring one, and so Elrond had done the same.

Out of the corner of an eye, he saw Maedhros come to his feet, and Fingon standing very still next to him, so still that the very stillness caught the eye. Maglor, who had been cheerful and relaxed, was now taut as a harp-string. That one word from Fëanor had changed the mood entirely.

"Yes, I am," Elrond said, and smiled, because he had never been afraid to take a risk.

"And _mine_ ," Maglor said to his father, and there was power ringing his words.

"And your son too, I understand, Maglor," Fëanor said, his eyes crinkling at the corners in amusement. "I have heard a great deal about you, Elrond. It seems I am fortunate in one respect at least: I have grandsons as talented as my children, and at least one is luckier, too. "

"Or wiser," Maglor said. "We are not going to war for the last Silmaril. I am not." He was shaking slightly, Elrond noticed with concern, and forcing out the words. Next to him, Maedhros was pale and silent, and his eyes were like flames. Fingon had his hand casually on his sword-hilt.

"How dare you..." Curufin began, and Celegorm took a breath, but their father silenced both of them with a look, and put an arm around Maglor.

"Look," Fëanor said gently. "I started this to avenge my father. That is what it was all for. Makalaurë, I know it must seem that you have been fighting for a very long time: so long that it's hard to see any other choice. But you don't have to fight me."

"Don't I?" Maglor said, stiff and unhappy. "It's your Oath. There's no point. No. " he took a harsh breath and finished in a rush. "No point my breaking it if you won't. And I'm breaking it."

"I forswear it," Maedhros said grimly. "I will make no more war for jewels."

Elrond could see how much it hurt them, and in that moment he wanted very much to sweep Fëanor and all his other sons back into the Halls of Mandos and take Maglor back to Tol Eressëa where his oath could sleep quiet surrounded by the music of the Sea for ages of the world.

But it was far too late for that, and Maedhros at least had the right to expect better of him.

Fëanor looked around at all of them. "I never meant to sacrifice my sons. I never thought it would come to that. I knew you were brave, all of you. I knew you were strong and able and determined. It did not occur to me that might not be enough. I let my anger carry me. It's not a good way to make decisions, making them in the heat of grief and wrath." His eyes went to Fingon, who nodded, rather stiffly.

Curufin laughed bitterly. "Someone should mention that to the Valar!"

"We did," Elrond said. "Many times over. The Valar have changed their position, over the years, on the matter of judging in wrath and offering little pity. There were a good number of letters written to them, once we got the idea started. Many by people who were neither kinslayers nor followers of the House of Fëanor."

Fëanor looked startled by that. "Really!" he said. "As I see it, this is not a matter for the Valar, now. There's little point sticking to a single approach, when other possibilities present themselves. No point treating silver as if it were steel, Curufinwë. Better to try something different. Makalaurë... it will be all right."

"I think it might be, too," Elrond said. "Maglor, will you come with me to rest and take some miruvor? You are not well."

Maglor pushed his father's arm away. Fëanor's sharp mobile face looked hurt. "No," Maglor said, his face set. "I'll see this through."

"Very well," Elrond said. He looked at Fëanor. "There are a lot of people waiting," he said.

"Are there?" Fëanor said. He looked at Maglor again, and then around at his other sons. "I suppose we had better go and talk to them."

The sun was setting as they came out of the tent, Fëanor first, and his sons behind him, with Fingon beside Maedhros, and Elrond next to Maglor. The sun was behind them as they left the shadow of Mandos's walls, and before them their shadows reached out long and dark, while the whole great watching host with its banners full of stars was dyed red and gold with light.

There had been a murmur of voices, the sound of conversations going on all around, and here and there, voices singing or music being played, but as Fëanor stepped out of the shadow of the Halls into the light, the voices and the music died as if an enchantmentl of silence had been spun across them, and for a long moment there was complete quiet.

Then Nerdanel, her hair like a flame in the sunset light, came hurrying to them to fling her arms around Amrod, Amras, and Curufin, and then around Celegorm and Caranthir, and last of all around Maedhros, and a great joyful shout went up: a wordless cheer at first, that shaped itself into a name:

"Fëanor!" they cried, "Fëanor!" Thousands of clear voices shook the air and echoed from the walls of Mandos.

It was a warcry that Elrond had never heard used in battle himself, but he had grown up with the tale of it. It had rung out across long vanished East Beleriand and North across the plains of Lothlann and Ard-Galen, bringing terror to the servants of the Enemy.

If Námo heard it, deep inside his halls, he made no sign.

Fëanor waited for Nerdanel to finish greeting their sons, looking out in wonder at the crowd. Then he held up a hand, and silence fell.

Elrond had expected a speech, some grand oration of the kind that Fëanor's legend was made of. In fact Fëanor said, conversationally, "Thank you very much for coming. I hope someone remembered to bring the wine." He nodded to them all and turned to Nerdanel.

They cheered anyway, and then, since neither Fëanor nor his sons seemed inclined to speak again, they took it as a command and began to broach wineskins that had been brought from Tirion.

"He doesn't make speeches until he has something to say," Maglor told Elrond, watching Fëanor and Nerdanel talking. Nerdanel had her hands on her hips again and was wearing a very determined expression. It was not, of course the first time that Nerdanel and her husband had spoken, since, entirely without precedent, she had been permitted to speak with Fëanor in the Halls of Mandos. Elrond was not sure if that had been intended as a concession to Fëanor, or to Nerdanel, or to both of them. But then the usual rules rarely seemed to apply to Fëanor.

Maedhros had been watching them, too, until Finrod, hurrying out from the crowd, came to meet him with a joyful smile and an enthusiastic embrace, and close behind him came Fingolfin, Lalwen and a number of friends that Elrond remembered from his youth, who gathered around Maedhros and Caranthir together.

Celebrimbor had come to greet his father, and had brought Elrohir, Frodo and Sam with him, as well as some jewel-smiths. It seemed a somewhat awkward meeting, from what Elrond could see, but Elrohir was clearly trying heroically to bridge the awkwardness, as he might have done between guests at Rivendell. Frodo asked an earnest question about Curufin's work in the years of the Trees in a manner that no-one could possibly take offence at.

Amrod and Amras together were greeting people who must be old friends from Beleriand, who seemed uncomplicatedly glad to see them. Now, someone tall, bright-eyed and dark-haired had come up to Caranthir and touched him tentatively on the shoulder. Caranthir turned. His eyes went wide, and they embraced, weeping. Of course: Caranthir had been the third of Fëanor's sons who had been married. It seemed that this marriage, at least, might have survived war and death.

They had left Celegorm standing alone, and Elrond was just groping hastily for some neutral subject to discuss with him, when Elrond's grandmother Nimloth came striding up, her strong face determined and her silver earrings swinging.

"I have a thing or two to talk about with you," she said to Celegorm.

Celegorm raised unimpressed eyebrows. That had no effect on Nimloth at all. Clearly he had recognised her, so there was no need for Elrond to make introductions between Celegorm and his victim. Elrond would have done it, but it was something of a relief not to have to.

"First," Nimloth said, "I want to talk to you about my cousin Lúthien. And then about my death and my husband's."

"You certainly hold onto grudges for a good long time," Celegorm said looking as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "I have been pardoned by the Valar. That's why I'm here, in case that wasn't clear. Mandos does not let people go who still hold malice. Why make yourself unhappy?"

"I never make myself unhappy," Nimloth told him sternly in her strong Doriathrin accent. "Nor do I hold onto grudges. That sounds more your kind of thing than mine, I see no merit in it. But your brother Maglor turns out to be annoyingly squeamish about some of my questions. I think you might be more robust."

"You won't see any guilt from me," Celegorm said, with his flaxen head held high, although his eyes flickered in a way that suggested to Elrond, who knew Celegorm's brother very well, that he might be skirting the truth a little there.

"Guilt," Nimloth said firmly, "Is not what I am looking for. I would like facts. Facts are far more useful, in the general way. And there are some things we need to get sorted out."

"Are there." Celegorm did an excellent impersonation of someone who was bored rather than discomforted.

"Yes," Nimloth said firmly. "I want to know how you did that last backward cut. It looked physiologically improbable. There must be a trick to it. And also I have some questions to ask you about the languages of dragon-flies."

Celegorm had given up looking bored, and was now frankly staring at Nimloth. "Dragon-flies."

"They are an interest of mine." Nimloth told him. "But first things first. Lúthien."

Elrond, filled with silent laughter, caught Maglor's eye.

Maglor was still looking tense, but managed to smile back. "If there is one person who deserves an inquisition by Nimloth, It's definitely Celegorm," he said.

"... did she just pinch his backside?" Elrond asked half under his breath.

"Probably," Maglor said distantly. "She patted mine."

"She did?" Elrond blinked. "Celebrían thinks she sets out to disconcert people deliberately."

"Disconcerting Celegorm seems a gentle enough revenge, under the circumstances," Maglor said. He was still watching Fëanor, some distance away. Night had fallen and some way away, the first fires were flaring into light. Stars were coming out.

Aredhel had joined the little group around Curufin, and had put an arm round her cousin. Angrod's wife Eldalótë had come to join Amrod and Amras.

Maedhros appeared by Maglor's shoulder. He seemed to have lost Fingon, somewhere. "Can we not get this over with?" Maedhros said quietly. "I know you said, wait, Maglor, but he hasn't said he'll break it, and we can't go on as though he will. You look as though you are about to snap."

"I am not," Maglor said in a voice that was granite, compared to the usual gold.

Maedhros frowned. "Well if you aren't, I am. Whether we are going back there," he nodded at the dark mass of the Halls that loomed against the dark sky some distance away, "Or out into the darkness, then we might as well get it over with."

"You aren't," Elrond said. "But let us have this done."

"Are you taking foolish risks again, Elrond?" Maedhros asked him. He was, improbably, smiling.

"Oh yes," Elrond said. "For many thousands of years of the Sun. Come. You always said that I should on no account follow the House of Fëanor. So, just now I am of the Children of Lúthien, and I suggest you follow me."

He went to Fëanor and Nerdanel. "I apologise for interrupting," he said. "But there is still the matter of the Oath and the Silmaril, and my father Eärendil is waiting."


	3. Chapter 3: Words and Kings

Eärendil and Elwing were easy enough to find. Among all that great encampment with its banners, hounds and horses, there was only one great sky-ship that shone with reflected starlight. They were sitting together on the grass under it, and with them was Elwing's father, Dior.

Elrond had hoped to come to them quietly, but all eyes were on Fëanor. By the time they had reached Vingilot, they had collected Finrod, Amárië, Fingolfin, and Fingon again and as they came up to the shining ship, they met with Finarfin, Eärwen and many of the people of the House of Finarfin too.

"If you would give us a moment," Elrond said, to various High Kings of the Noldor, and drew Fëanor on to where Eärendil had come to his feet.

"This is Fëanor," Elrond said, since some introduction seemed to be needed, though there was only one person in all that great crowd whose spirit burned like that. It drew the mind's eye. "I count him as a grandfather, as you know. And this, Fëanor, is my father, Eärendil, and my mother, Elwing, and my grandfather Dior, son of Beren and Lúthien, who took the Silmaril from the Enemy."

"I heard a little about that," Fëanor said. "Though considerably later than anyone else, it seems. I have been somewhat short of news." He glanced at Nerdanel beside him. Her freckled face, to Elrond's amazement, looked slightly embarrassed. Nerdanel had, Elrond knew, been wary of providing information to her husband in the Halls of Mandos.

Fëanor turned to Dior, who looked at him coldly. "My father Finwë and your grandfather Elwë were dear friends long ago," Fëanor said. "I am sworn to slay anyone who takes in hand a Silmaril, and yet, my hatred for the Enemy is very bitter. It delights me to hear of him humbled and dispossessed. It grieves me that my oath should have come between us."

"And that, presumably, is where we come in," Eärendil said, easily. "For I have in hand the Silmaril, though it is an heirloom of Elwing's house." His clear blue eyes flicked over Fëanor, noting, presumably, the lack of a sword. Eärendil himself was armed and although not wearing armour, he had on a heavy dark blue leather coat with strong reinforced panels, designed to break the force of a blow. Still, he looked unworried. He was smiling.

Elwing was standing tall and still next to him. She too carried a long sword upon her belt. Her long pale face looked troubled, and her eyes went to Elrohir, who had come up with Celebrían, and then to Elrond. He gave her a quick smile, and she smiled back. He was aware that a few steps behind, Maedhros had recoiled in discomfort, seeing her. But Fingon was with him. And Elwing had chosen to come here.

"My son Elrond has told me a good deal about this oath," Elwing said to Fëanor. "I may say, after what your sons did, I was not at first inclined to want to hear about it."

"It was their duty," Fëanor said, with a glance at Dior. "Their sworn word, and mine, to reclaim it."

Elwing frowned at him. "The gem came to me as an heirloom of my House," she said. "It was one of the very few things my parents left me. I was two years old, when your children slew my father, and my mother Nimloth."

Fëanor took a sharp breath. "I did not know that," he said, and his face was filled with distress.

"I did not remember their faces," Elwing said, meditatively. "My mother, my father, my brothers. I believe you lost a mother, when you were a child... When _my_ mother returned at last from death, someone had to tell me who she was. My brothers are still lost. They were six years old. My children were the same age, when your sons drove me into the sea, slew my people and took my sons away. I thought for many years that my children were both dead too."

Fëanor had no answer for that. He was weeping silently.

Elwing said "And so, I had very little desire to hear of you or your sons, or your oath. But then I thought. We are both of us half-elven, Eärendil and I, and so, long ago, we had the choice. Eärendil would have taken the path of Men, and gone beyond the world, but I... I chose to stay, and be with the Elves, and so, for love, did he."

"One of us had to choose," Eärendil said. "Not such a terrible thing, to end up among the Elves."

"No. But if I'd given you your choice, it would have been Elrond's Silmaril long since," Elwing said to him. "And much as I might have wished it otherwise, Elrond loves Maglor and Maedhros. He dearly wishes to see their oath ended and have them live free of it. The only thing he's asked of me, since he was six years old... So I have decided that I shall give it to you."

Elrond let out a breath, and heard an answering gasp of breath from Maedhros. Maglor did not move or make any sound at all but Elrond could see the muscles in his neck rigid with tension.

"I thought you had decided you could not," he said, wondering, to his mother. "That you would only agree to bring it here to try some charm against their oath..."

Elwing gave him an awkward smile. "I kept thinking about it. What you said, what I said. And it was clear as starlight: this is what you'd do with it. My father is here, my mother, too. We don't need it any more. Varda has plenty of stars."

"Lots of choices, for running lamps for Vingilot," Eärendil said. "I can't see any argument to insist on using the only one that might provoke a war." He pulled a leather pouch from his pocket, and without ceremony, held it out to Fëanor.

"Careful," Maedhros said as his father reached out. "They burned us."

"I did bring some gloves..." Nerdanel began, but Fëanor laughed joyously and took the pouch.

"My thanks," he said to Eärendil, "and to you, Elwing, my thanks, but far more than that, my grief. The oath was poorly worded. I had not thought it might set my sons against a child! It was intended to strengthen wills against the Enemy, not chain them to his service. That is the last time I speak words of power without writing them down to check them first. It results in appalling workmanship."

"If I thought that you might do the same again," Eärendil said levelly, "then I would kill you now, and save myself future trouble, for all that my sons had one of yours as a second father."

"Would you!" Fëanor said, looking oddly pleased. "You don't mince your words. Good."

Eärendil nodded. "You seem a useful ally. Nothing worse than running short of those. And I'm told you are a quick learner."

"I used to be," Fëanor said, "This at least I have learned: darkness twists your words if you call on it, no matter who else you call besides."

He pulled the string open and tipped the contents out into his hand. Maglor winced, but his father did not. The stone spilled out into his palm, shining bright, and brighter yet, like evening on a summer's day, warming to the brilliance of the sun at mid-day, a light with memory to it, gleaming out of a past so distant and remote that Elrond could not remember it. A jangle of finely wrought chains and small gems followed it.

"It didn't burn you," Maglor said blankly, rubbing at the palm of his right hand with his left thumb.

"Of course not, Makalaurë." Nerdanel leant forward and prodded him sternly with one finger. He looked down at her and smiled. "Maglor," he corrected himself, more gently. "For one thing, I made this, and it recognises me still. But more than that, it was given to me freely and with goodwill, by one who I can count a kinsman."

He looked at Maglor's face and then at Maedhros's, outlined sharply in the light of the gem. Frozen, yearning.

"That's not the important thing," he said. "The important thing is to set my children free of... whatever my oath has become. And that now should be a simple thing, for it has been fulfilled. Maedhros took one, and it is safe below the earth, Maglor the second, and he chose to place it in the Sea, and here now is the third."

He stepped back a couple of steps and held the Silmaril high, and the light answered as he held it up, shining brilliant as if someone had opened a window into the past and all the light of lost Laurelin and Telperion was flooding through it.

It was a light that Elrond himself had only ever seen at a great distance, caught in a far-off star, and yet he recognised it as more than star, more than the light his lost father bore, or the light that shone in his foster-father's eyes. The light of the Silmaril ran like a bright thread through song and story, the light of Elvenhome of long ago, lost now in the deeps of Time but never forgotten.

"I hold my Oath fulfilled!" Fëanor called out, and the sound of his voice went through all the host, out across the plains and echoed from the walls of Mandos. "Eru Allfather hear me! Bear witness, all ye lords and princes of the Noldor! Bear witness all this great people! Fëanor holds his Oath fulfilled!"

And all that company around him called out in answer: "Heard and witnessed!"

. . . . . .

Elrond looked at Maglor, and then across at Maedhros. "How do you feel?" he asked.

Maedhros shrugged. "Not much different, if I'm honest," he admitted.

Maglor blinked. "I don't know," he said. "Well enough." He was lying, that was plain. Frustrated, Elrond let him see that he knew it. He had hoped that note of weary, accustomed evasion would be gone for good. He took his foster-father by the shoulder and looked into his eyes, looking for the cause within his mind.

Instinctively, Maglor's protections rose against him, and then fell again, as Maglor unhappily but dutifully took them down. He looked very tired, Elrond thought, as he searched for unwelcome intrusions.

After a moment, he saw there something dark and familiar. It was not moving much, but neither was it gone. He looked over at Fëanor. It did not seem to be troubling him, so far as Elrond could tell from this distance. But Maglor had lived with his oath for thousands of year more than his father had, and both Maglor and Maedhros had shed blood for it, far more than their father had.

Perhaps they would have to set all three gems into Fëanor's hand. Somehow. At least there must be no way now that Fëanor and his sons could be driven against their own people.

The flask of miruvor was on his belt. He poured out a cup and gave it to Maglor. "Please drink it," he said unhappily, quietly. "Perhaps not everything can be mended, after all, but that doesn't have to mean everlasting darkness."

Maglor wearily drained the cup, and Elrond poured another for Maedhros, keeping his hands low. Fingon stood in the way, so that no-one else would see.

. . . . .

Fëanor looked down at the Silmaril. "I'm not sure about this setting, Nerdanel," he said with some distaste, in an ordinary, day-to-day voice, the craftsman, not the orator. "What do you think? They were not designed to compete with other gems. This is very well-made, but it doesn't..."

He looked more closely at it and Nerdanel leaned over frowning to look as well.

"There's something wrong with this," Fëanor said. He put his hand over the gem itself, to look more closely at the setting.

"I need some tools," he said, looking around as if vices, drills, lenses, pliers and gauges could be expected to grow from the grass.

Nerdanel said, "Celebrimbor."

. . . . . .

"If I had known it would be needed, I would have brought a workshop," Celebrimbor said to his grandfather, apologetically.

"This is excellent, given that you could not have known," Fëanor told him approvingly. "I've worked with far fewer and less well-made tools!" Celebrimbor and many of his jewelsmiths had turned out bags and pockets, and had produced a fair number of tools that Elrond could recognise, and a far greater number that he could not. They were now spread out upon a plain white cloth, and Fëanor was sitting crosslegged in the middle. The Silmaril was bright enough that although the sky was dark no other source of light was needed.

"What do you make of it, Celebrimbor?" Nerdanel asked.

Celebrimbor looked at his grandfather, and receiving a nod of permission, picked up the gem and necklace and examined it closely with the device his grandfather had been using.

Curufin said, without coming too close or touching either necklace or Silmaril, "What is the mystery? It's the Nauglamir. Finrod's bit of glitter that the Dwarves made for him. A nice piece, to be fair to them. Someone looted it from Nargothrond after its fall, and it ended up in Doriath. Thingol had some workmen from Nogrod set the Silmaril in it and didn't pay them, or so we heard. That's why they killed him..."

He began to say something more, but, Elrond noticed, Amras trod heavily upon his foot, and Curufin closed his mouth abruptly.

"Yes," Celebrimbor said, still peering intently at the necklace. "It's certainly the Nauglamir. But it's not only the Nauglamir and the Silmaril. There's something else. Very faint, I can barely see it."

"I agree. I would say it had been removed, but not very expertly," Fëanor said. "Traces remain. Words of power strung about it. Is that Dwarvish? It looks foul. I didn't think the Dwarves traded in that sort of unpleasantness."

"Definitely not!" Celebrimbor told him. He set the necklace down in front of him and stared at it. "The Dwarves would find this as loathsome as we do. At least, the ones that I knew would. This is not Dwarven. It's something quite different. And, I think familiar... where is the double-strength loupe? Oh, there." He looked through the lens and nodded abruptly.

"I've seen something of this style before," Celebrimbor said. He pushed the necklace at his father. "And so have you, if it's what I think it is."

Curufin leant forward cautiously, without touching the Silmaril, and took the lens. He looked through it, and then ventured to run his finger across a curled wire. Then he grimaced and pulled away with a look of distaste. "Yes," he said. "I have seen something like this before. Twice. At Dagor Bragollach and then again at Nirnaeth Arnoediad. But only at a great distance."

Celebrimbor said softly, his eyes fixed on the necklace, "And I have seen it on the field of Tumhalad, raging in flame, when Orodreth died, and the army of Nargothrond with him. When we who were left were beaten back and could neither recover his body, or win back to Nargothrond... This is Glaurung's work. Dragon-gold."

"The dragon sickness?" Elrond said. He had heard of it, of course. "Thranduil's wood-elves used to speak of the dragon sickness lying on the hoard of Erebor. But Erebor was well enough the last I heard of it, for all that Smaug lived there a good long while. I suppose Smaug was young, as dragons go."

"Glaurung was old and foul and strong: one of the Enemy's great generals. Not just a dragon," Curufin said, narrowing his eyes against the brilliance of the gem. "He led armies and cast spells of doom and torment. I can make it out, or part of it, anyway." He thought for a moment, looking at the necklace, and then began to speak.

"Their doom falls, their song wanes,  
by iron slain, by steel chained.  
Greed that sings not, that knows no joy  
Shall their last hope destroy,  
By treachery through carven gold:  
over Beleriand the shadow rolls... the rest is lost, save for a word or two. Betrayal , here, and kinship then later, in pain and shadow. "

"Well translated," Fëanor said to him. "I could not pick out so much myself."

Curufin shrugged. "Easier to read the words when you have seen the writer. Shoddy work, to leave it like this, with the spell only half-broken... "

"Perhaps," Fëanor said, thoughtfully. "But then it is wrapped around a Silmaril, and the Silmarils were the heart and soul of the Oath. Breaking it with the Oath inside it might have been difficult. I wonder if this was aimed at our House deliberately, or if it was only a coincidence that Elwë — Thingol — chose to bring the two together." He shrugged. "Fortunately, we have here all the expertise and the tools to complete the task. I hope we can do it without damaging the necklace. It would be an excellent piece of work, if it had not been married with a gem so emphatically not designed for it."

"No." Finrod said. He had been standing to one side, listening unusually quietly for him, but he had shuddered when Curufin had read out the verse. "I don't think that is a good idea."

"No?" Fëanor frowned at him dauntingly.

"The Silmaril is yours," Finrod said. "I have never claimed otherwise, no matter what you may have heard. I made an oath too, you know... But the necklace, if it is anyone's at all, is mine, and I would very much prefer to make an end of it. My friends who made it are long dead, and they would be filled with horror if they could hear those words. I'm very glad they can't. They'd hate to think of their gift being used by a dragon to bring sorrow! I will remember it, as it was when it was given to me, in joy, and I'll remember them too. But the necklace should be unmade and with it, whatever is left of those words."

Fëanor shrugged. "Very well," he said. "It is yours to do with as you wish. Curvo, would you...?"

Curufin gave Finrod a thoughtful look. "Very willingly," he said, and from the assembled tools he chose with precise care, wire cutters, a small pointed file, a vice, a heavy hammer, and a small stump anvil.

. . . . .

Fëanor spent most of that night talking: to his brothers and sister Lalwen, at first, and then for a long time with the queen, Eärwen of Alqualondë. His sons had a good deal to talk of with their cousins and their people, too.

Elrond left them all to it and went back to the place where he had left Celebrían, Gandalf and the hobbits, who were already settling down to sleep beside the fire that Fingaeril and Lindir had built.

Maglor turned up there well after midnight, escorted by Bregolien and a number of her friends.

Elrond restrained himself, with some difficulty, from asking Maglor how he felt, or looking into his mind. He offered him a cup of wine, instead.

"No miruvor?" Maglor said drily, took the cup and sat down on the ground next to him, a little away from the fire and those who were sitting around it singing softly, and the sleepers wrapped in blankets a little further away.

"I have some if you want it," Elrond said. "But you lived without it and sang the oath into sleep yourself in Middle-earth. I didn't intend to push. Healing the Edain has given me a bad habit of taking up cares and woes unasked, and nobody else here is at all unwell. I fear you took the brunt of it."

Maglor took a swig and lay back, looking at the stars. "I'm not complaining," he said. "You know your business. Though it might just be a matter of time for the last remnant of it to disappear, with luck. It does feel lighter."

"Really?"

"Really," Maglor said, and held his mind open.

Elrond looked away. "I'll take your word for it."

"It stopped biting quite so hard when Father declared it fulfilled, but it was lighter again once Curvo chopped up the necklace. My father has a theory that the dragon-curse had got tangled in it, and helped give it shape... But there is no-one left to call enemy. There's no urgency now."

"No. Though you always say that, whether there's need of haste or not!"

"I do not," Maglor said, with enormous dignity. "Very occasionally, there is need of haste, and when there is, I do something about it. You've been talking to my mother."

"It was Caranthir, in fact," Elrond told him.

"Oh, was it? The brutal honesty of brothers! I knew you'd get along with him. Or that he'd get along with you, which is more or less the same thing... Anyway, I am so deeply in your debt, I have no hope of repaying it, except with thanks. There's nothing in my mind that you aren't welcome to look at if you want to. Though I fear it's very dull. Two thirds music, one sixth guilt, and what remains is mostly concerned with wine and food."

"Surely not," Elrond said, smiling. "I would have said that at least one-sixth was devoted to war and horses."

"That's the guilt," Maglor said, and laughed. "I came to tell you that my father has loaned the Silmaril to Eärendil. He says he has nowhere to keep it just at the moment, and that if his Enemy tests the borders of the sky, he would be delighted if his kinsman Eärendil strikes him with it."

"Truly?" Elrond said, overcome with delighted laughter "He didn't keep it by him for a day! My mother must be pleased. Or at least, surprised."

"She definitely looked surprised," Maglor told him, sitting up with a gleam of mischief in his eye. "Everyone did, apart from my mother. I suspect it was her suggestion. I was sorry you missed it, all the wide-eyed faces! Finrod's expression was very funny. Oh, and my father said that it seemed unlikely that even the Valar would be able to take the Silmaril from Eärendil, so it would be entirely safe with him. That was after Finarfin told him all about Ancalagon. But more than that, I think my father likes him."

"A good thing, too," Elrond said, relieved and delighted all at once.

"Finarfin has planned a great feast, to welcome them all back to Tirion. And me, I suppose, though I've been there quite recently."

"Are you going to sing?"

"I haven't been asked to yet. Perhaps. I don't have time to write something new for it. I have been using the two-thirds of my mind usually reserved for music for unaccustomed worrying instead, these last few weeks. I had not thought I might find myself short of a song."

"Sing one of Bilbo's," Elrond suggested.

Maglor made a noise of alarmed protest that made Elrond laugh. "My father would wonder what on earth had happened to me."

"Perhaps he would. Though Bilbo's poetry isn't as bad as all that!"

"No, it's not, you are right. It's only strange and different. I like I sit beside the fire and think. Perhaps I will sing one of his, at that. It would be worth it to see the expression on his face."

"Bilbo, or your father?"

"Bilbo! It would make him smile. Though now you mention it, my father's face might be amusing to watch if I don't mention it's not mine till afterwards. He probably hasn't heard a single one of my songs since the rising of the Sun. Though I suppose he might like hobbit poetry. It would be something new and different, for him... People say we were too proud. There's nothing proud about hobbit songs."

"You don't need to go around being harmless any more," Elrond pointed out. "You said you'd try to keep it up until the Valar had released them, or we knew they never would. Now they are free, and you are a prince."

"I suppose so. What an odd thought. When we arrived on Tol Eressëa a few years ago, I was Elrond's untrustworthy dog, and it seemed that everyone looked sideways, thinking I might bite them... I suppose it wasn't everyone, even then, but it felt like it! I was much tempted to bark, and make them jump."

Elrond laughed. "I'm surprised you didn't. It seems the sort of thing you'd do. But princes are supposed to be proud. It's practically in the word."

Maglor looked sideways at Elrond in the starlight. "Is that why you refused to be a prince? Heir to all our kingly houses, and yet you call yourself only Master Elrond, if you use a title at all."

"I have a circlet," Elrond said, defensively. "Celebrían made it for me."

"But never a crown. Very sensible. I wouldn't want one either. Nor did Fingon, though he put up with having to wear one, in his customary heroic manner."

Elrond looked down at the shape of Vilya, glinting faintly on his finger, and turned it around. "What do you think happens to Men when they die?" he asked.

Maglor blinked, surprised. "If you don't know, how should I?" he asked. He looked at Elrond, and frowned. "Oh, I see. You were thinking of Aragorn."

"He would be two hundred and ten years old. If he's still alive," Elrond said. "I think he is. That's old, for Men. Not as old as Elros, but Elros had the choice himself... Most of them die younger."

"I know," Maglor said. "But they go on, don't they? The Guests, we used to call them sometimes. They come here for a little while, and then they go on?"

"Elladan is gone already," Elrond admitted. It hurt to speak of it. Galadriel, Celebrían and Elrohir had known without having to be told, of course. "I have seen it."

"Oh." Maglor said. "Elrond, I am sorry to hear it."

Elrond shrugged "There seemed to be so many other things to think of, at the time. There was nothing to be done. It was easy for him, to slip away. I saw that, too. Arwen will find it harder, at the ending. Aragorn will go first. And he'll come here," he looked towards the walls of Mandos, hidden by the darkness under stars, "and then he will go on, and she will have to follow. But she lived for so long at the pace of Elves... I wish I knew for sure that he'd be waiting for her. That the ending would be bright."

"If he doesn't wait, then when he gets there, wherever it is, Elros will give him a fine telling off," Maglor said.

"Yes. I said that to Celebrían," Elrond told him, and laughed, then cut himself off when it sounded bitter. "I said it to Aragorn too. Not that Aragorn would go without her, if he had the choice... I almost believe it. I've seen so many of them come and go. You never get used to it. Easier when they are not afraid."

Maglor got up, found the wineskin and topped up both their cups. "I think it might be better than here," he said. "I don't know, of course. But I think Elros would have come back to tell you, if it wasn't. I know that's not entirely usual, but your family has something of a tradition when it comes to ignoring the usual rules about death."

"Our family," Elrond said. "Wasn't it your grandmother who chose to die and then decided she was tired of being dead, and made the Valar revise all the rules?"

"It was," Maglor admitted. "All right then, our family. It was Arwen who found a bear-cub and brought it home, wasn't it? I could see Elros doing that, if there had been bears left in Beleriand then."

"But there were none. I don't think either of us felt tempted to bring back the spiders, orcs or trolls... Arwen might have tried for a werewolf, though. I can see her with a werewolf pup, feeding it scraps and teaching it to fetch a ball in sharp white fangs... Elladan wouldn't. He always made a very clear line between the hounds and the wolves, the hunters and the hunted. I remember once..."

The fire burned slowly to ashes, and above, the stars of Varda wheeled through the dark blue sky.

. . . . .

Rain was falling on the white city of Tirion upon Túna as the host rode up to it : a thin bright rain falling under grey clouds that shone in the morning light that shone in beneath the clouds and between the mountain-walls from the eastern sea.

Maglor wondered if the rain was intended to convey a message: from Manwë, perhaps, or from Ulmo, and if so, whether the message was grief, or joy or renewal.

Or perhaps it was only rain. It shone and glistened on the white walls of Tirion, and the diamond-strewn pavements, the shining towers, and stairs of crystal. The rain-mist hid the mountain-tops and the view down the pass of Calacyria to the Sea in a grey veil.

Finrod, Angrod and Eldalotë sent riders ahead up into the city, to make hurried arrangements for awnings and ensure that all the plans for the day were going smoothly.

Then, after a brief pause, the House of Finwë rode back into Tirion, almost all of them at least, for the first time in seven thousand years, and all about them there were voices singing, and harps and trumpets playing.

In Valimar the singing might have been more cunningly-wrought, in Alqualondë, it might have been more clear and bright. But neither Alqualondë nor even the choirs of Valimar in the blissful Years of the Trees could have matched the singers of Tirion on that day for their passion.

They rode up into the city, to the House of Finwë beneath the Mindon Eldaliéva, which had stood empty for all those long years, and they went in.

. . . . . .

There was a good deal of song and merriment. Not entirely practiced, the merriment, the laughter sometimes had a sharper edge. The singing was a little careful from time to time, as people remembered verses that it might be wisest not to sing, and arranged themselves to dance so as to avoid embarrassment and awkwardness, but on the whole, there was a lack of argument that Maglor could not remember seeing in Tirion since he was very young indeed. Not that he had spent much time in Tirion recently. Perhaps it was always like this now.

Finrod and Maedhros appeared next to him after a particularly energetic dance, with cups of well-watered wine. None of the royal family were taking any chances with getting drunk just yet.

"It won't last," Finrod said, looking around at dancing Elves then smiling, perhaps a little more brightly than was entirely natural, at his cousins. "I think there's almost bound to be a fight or two. But the longer we can put it off, the more likely it is that any fight will be more a show of sparks than anything serious..."

"Such pessimism, Finrod!" Maedhros said. He gave three people who were among his more enthusiastic supporters, who had been muttering together, a quelling look, and pointed with his single hand. They bowed and went off in three separate directions. "Nobody has fought yet, and if Nimloth of Doriath and my brother Celegorm can lead a dance together, there is no excuse for anyone else."

"A thoroughly heartwarming sight!" Finrod said, and his laugh was very nearly his real one this time. "And much more generally convincing than my mother dancing with your father. Everyone knows my mother can be diplomatic — and that your father can be entirely charming when he wants to be, of course," he added, rather hastily. "But nobody has ever called either Celegorm or Nimloth anything but abrupt at best."

"Abrupt is a very kindly way of putting it, Finrod," Maglor said. "Or at least, it's a kindly way to describe Celegorm. I don't know what the right word is for Nimloth. We might need a new one."

"Forgiving will do for me," Maedhros said.

"Hmmm," Maglor said. "You haven't met her informally yet, have you? That still awaits you. She's certainly remarkable, but... well, trust me on this, a new word is definitely needed."

The clear note of a bell rang out around the court of Tirion. The great feast was about to begin.

. . . . . .

The eating and drinking in the great feast-hall, with its white pillars in the form of great beech-trees, and its walls decorated with unimaginably ancient tapestries, still bright with beech-leaf green and golden browns, went on for a long while.

When the food was eaten at last and the singing started up again, the High King Finarfin stood up.

He said nothing, but stood quietly between his two brothers, and somehow the longer he stood there, the harder it became to look away from him. His tall slender gold-crowned figure caught the eye and his silence took the attention as no words could have done.

After a few moments, everyone there had stopped talking and singing, and they were all looking at him in silence.

"I have a few things to say," Finarfin said. His voice was not loud, and yet all in that great hall could hear him.

"First, I must tell you I am taking a new name, or rather, taking back an old one. When I returned from the war in Middle-earth, I took the name Finwëarafinwë, rendered into the common tongue of Beleriand: Finarfin.

"That was, as I declared both to my people and the Valar, in memory of my father, Finwë, cruelly slain by our Enemy. He is still much missed. And as I also declared to the Valar, I took that name in the language of Middle-earth, to remember my daughter, Galadriel, exiled by decree of the Valar, my sons, cruelly slain by our Enemy, and also my sister Lalwen, and my brothers Fëanor and Fingolfin, and their families, fallen in battle against the Enemy, and forbidden to return to life."

He held out his hand to Galadriel who sat near him, in a simple circlet of gold that was outshone by the glory of her hair. "My daughter is, to my great joy, returned to me at last. Two of my sons, my sister and my brothers too, and Aegnor has chosen to wait in the halls of Mandos and seek healing there. Though grief can neither be wholly healed nor forgotten, I shall take back again my name, Arafinwë."

He paused, and turned to each of his brothers in turn. "So," he said, in a more conversational tone. "It has been a very long time, and there is a great deal still to say. I shall try to be brief. You," and he nodded to Fëanor "wanted your place as our father's heir and leader of our people unquestioned. And you," to Fingolfin,"wanted our mother's children properly acknowledged, and your great abilities recognised."

This was in Maglor's opinion a rather kindly interpretation of Fingolfin's words in Tirion and on the march north to Araman. He remembered how Fingolfin had made it clear through a thousand tiny jabs that he thought Fëanor a fool. If he had not actually hoped to be named king by popular acclamation, he had come very near it. But Fingolfin had paid far more for that than he had owed, and even Celegorm had the sense not to make an issue of it now.

Nobody spoke, and Arafinwë went on.

"All of you, my children included, wanted a wide canvas to paint on and broad lands to explore. And both my brothers wanted justice, and revenge, of course, upon our great Enemy."

Fingolfin and Fëanor were both looking at him curiously, but neither replied. Arafinwë smiled faintly.

"So much for the two of you, your great families, and my adventurous children, loyal to their friends. You let me turn back. Neither of my brothers even tried to stop me. So I returned to the unpleasant and messy task of picking up all the pieces in Tirion, of apologising humbly to the Valar and begging their pardon. One small reason among many why we are all sitting here in our father's hall now: because I turned back and made peace."

Fëanor made a face. Fingolfin only nodded calmly.

Arafinwë went on. "Thanks to Eärwen, who is a peaceweaver of no small skill, we found our way back to friendship with the Teleri. We tried to stitch together the factions, as the dead came limping home one by one. We built and supplied the army of Valinor. You left me to lead our people into the war, to work with the Valar and the Vanyar, to fight in the final battle to overthrow our Enemy. To collect up the many thralls who came crawling out of Angband, and bring them aid and comfort. To bring our people home again. To try to heal the deep wounds left by bitter words and war and resentment. To resolve the many, many arguments. You left that behind for me, all these long, long years. Not the kind of thing that gets commemorated very often in song, I discover, but someone had to do it. Does that seem a fair summation?"

"And a very good job you have made of it," Fingolfin said gravely.

"Yes," Arafinwë said, as one stating an obvious fact. "I made an excellent job of it. I and Eärwen of Alqualondë, together. With some most valuable help from Anairë and dear Eldalótë, and from Finrod, after he came back, let us not forget that."

Fëanor stood up and bowed low. "You have done great honour to our father and yourself," he said. "I have said it to our brother and I say it now to you. Our father's youngest son was in some respects the wisest of the three."

"Thank you," Arafinwë said. "It has been very hard work. It is pleasant to have it appreciated. And now, I'm delighted to say, I have finished."

He took the crown from his head and weighed it in his hands for a moment. "I'm not sorry to say goodbye to this," he said.

Then he walked over to Fëanor, and put it down firmly on the table in front of him.

"There you go," he said. Fingolfin's eyebrows went up.

Fëanor stared at him. "You can't do that!" he said.

"You are our father's eldest son. It's yours."

"Well, yes, but surely the Valar..." Fëanor said.

Arafinwë looked at him, golden eyebrows raised. "I was not expecting my brother Fëanor, of all people, to tell me that the Valar should decide who is High King of the Noldor!" he said.

Fëanor laughed, a sudden surprised laugh that reminded Maglor of days long past, when his father had only not had much in common with his brothers, instead of being embroiled in feuds with them. "Perhaps not, at that," he said. "But still, being king did not turn out to be one of my strengths."

"I hope you aren't telling me you don't think you can do it," Arafinwë said. "That's not something I expected to hear from my eldest brother either.

Fëanor was looking at Fingolfin. "Did you know about this?" he demanded. Maglor exchanged a swift, worried look with Maedhros.

"No!" Fingolfin said. "He's the king. Or he was. He didn't ask me about it. I think he's right, though. You didn't have a good start, the first time. My fault in part, as much as yours, and the darkness, the grief, and the Enemy. But our people are united now, and the law well established. Inheritance goes to the eldest first. Take the crown, and I and my people will follow you."

Maglor looked across at Fingon, sitting some distance away with Angrod, and found that Maedhros was already doing the same. Fingon shrugged at them helplessly. Presumably nobody had mentioned this to him, either. Finrod was looking at Fëanor, with a politely interested expression, and would not look at anyone else, even when Maglor reached out with his mind and tapped. Clearly Finrod had known, and had kept it quiet.

Fëanor reached out and touched the crown thoughtfully with one finger with a faint air of distaste. "I'm not sure I want it," he said.

"Good," said Arafinwë, "That's probably the best guarantee I could ask that you'll be good at it."

Fëanor made a face at him.

"Appoint a regent, if you want. Delegate. Or if you must, resign in favour of Maedhros, or Fingolfin — if either of them will do it — or Gil-galad. Or Lalwen: I'd happily serve her as our Queen. I won't suggest Findis, who has not set foot in Tirion since you were exiled. You don't know Gil-galad, but you'll find he's very talented. But whoever you give it to, it won't be me, or any of my House. Eärwen wants to go back to the Sea. I want to go with her. Finrod has had enough of doing half my work for me and deserves a chance to use his many other talents. Galadriel has defended her people from the Shadow for far too long, and needs peace and rest. Finduilas, Angrod and Orodreth have never wanted it. All of us have done our duty all these long years by the Noldor, and by the authority entrusted to me. And now I give the crown to my brother, to whom it belongs by right, and I leave the choice to him. "

And he bowed deeply.

Very slowly, Fëanor picked up the crown and looked at it. It was a lightweight confection of golden strands, nothing like the crown that Maglor could remember his grandfather wearing, though it looked rather more comfortable. The entire room was silent, every face watching.

"The Noldor should be ruled by one they all know and trust," Fëanor said. "And yet, it's true that your House has carried the burden nobly, and should not be asked to keep on carrying it unwillingly. I spoke with my father Finwë in the Halls of Mandos. He praised my brothers to me, and before I left, he urged me to help them in any way I could. I did not think there would be any aid that I could offer, but none the less, I gave my word."

He frowned at Arafinwë. It was not the angry frown, but the puzzled one, the frown that came with solving complicated problems. "You said that you would not suggest our sister Findis, because she has been long absent from Tirion, yet I have been absent just as long. So have my sons. There must be many people now in Tirion who have never spoken with us, and know nothing but our names."

He turned the crown in his hands and looked at Fingolfin. Maglor touched Maedhros's mind, in blank astonishment, and found a sense of Fingon already there.

H _e isn't going to_

 _Is he?_

 _He did let go of the Silmaril_

 _Yes but not to my father!_

 _Better to him than to me_

 _Or me_

 _Or me! If you turn it down so will I you are not pushing it on me..._

 _You'd give Celegorm the crown?_

 _I'll give it straight to Fingon and watch you both squirm_

 _That is not a good joke_

 _Don't_

 _Lalwen won't come back to Tirion_

 _The Fëanorian Quarter barely listened to Finrod most of them left Gil-galad for Eregion_

 _There's always Celebrimbor_

 _Don't you think he's suffered enough?_

 _Or Elrond_

 _NO._

 _I think he's going to_

Fingolfin broke the moment of silence. "I and my house also returned only recently from the Halls of Mandos," he said. "And this is only your first day here in Tirion. If you will hear my counsel, I would say, take some time to get to know our people again."

Fëanor put the crown down again on the table before him, with an audible click.

"I will hear your counsel," he said to Fingolfin. "I will not wear this," he said. "But I cannot turn away, or pass the task on to others without thought. Let us take twelve years to get to know the Noldor again, I and my children and you and yours. All of the Noldor. Then I will be ready for such a choice."

Arafinwë bowed again, and Fingolfin smiled.

Maglor could tell that some people thought the silence awkward, though Fëanor clearly did not. Many of Fëanor's supporters were in the hall, and left to themselves they would have cheered, but Celebrimbor had spoken sternly to them. They did not speak, but waited with their eyes on Fëanor's face, as he thought.

Maedhros prodded Maglor unobtrusively, with one fingertip.

Of course, his father had help to deal with such minor difficulties as awkward silences. Maglor stood up. He did not have a harp with him, but he had made do without a harp before, on occasion, even in the hall of his grandfather Finwë.

This was not the moment for one of Bilbo's songs. That would come later.

"Father!" he said, "I will sing. Hear me! This is the song _Return Beyond Hope_ , that I made when first I returned from beyond the Sea. It tells of the deeds of the House of Arafinwë."

And Fëanor nodded in pleased approval. "I haven't heard it!" he said with honest enthusiasm.


	4. Chapter 4: That We Find in the Sea

Notes:

(for this chapter it may be useful if I remind you that Elrond is descended from the House of Bëor on both sides: via his great-grandfather Beren son of Barahir, but also via his grandfather Tuor, son of Rian, daughter of Belegund.

I'll also mention that when it comes to Fingolfin, this chapter is from Maglor's point of view, and the character viewpoint might not always align completely with the authorial one. )

* * *

Gulls were calling about the tall tower of Koromas that towered above the pine-trees, riding the Tol Eressëa wind on strong grey wings.

"Phew!" Frodo said, sitting down on the step at the bottom of the tower rather abruptly, and getting out his pipe. "A steep climb, that!"

"The view's well worth the climb, though," Bilbo said. He got his pipe lit, and proudly puffed a smoke ring out west, towards the Bay of Eldamar, surging with waves in the September sunlight, towards the white-tipped mountains of the Pelóri and the pass of the Calacirya. He waved the pipe-stem. "I can see all the way to Tirion!"

The white spire of the Mindon Eldaliéva was twinkling in the far distance between the grey mountain-walls. High above it, too far for hobbits to see, Maglor's eyes could just pick out the great wings of the Eagles of Manwë, as they wheeled around the high peaks, and soared across the Calacirya.

Maglor no longer lived in the house of his foster-son Elrond. He had listened to the plaintive urgings of his people who lived in Tirion, and had taken a house in the Fëanorian Quarter of the city where he could be their voice to the King, and where old friends, brothers and cousins could more easily visit and be visited. Conveniently, there was room for a growing collection of musical instruments of all kinds there too. He would never play quite the music that had rung through the shining streets of Tirion by the light of Trees of Gold and Silver, but there were still songs to be sung there, even after so long.

But Celebrían, in her usual whirl of kindly thoughts and words, had decided that he must keep a room in her house too, at least for visiting. Today, he had returned to the isle of Tol Eressëa, after several months absence, for a celebration. He intended to stay for a while.

"Happy twenty-fifty-first birthday, Bilbo," Frodo said, and produced his own smoke-ring, rather like a very small contented dragon, Maglor thought.

"And a happy seventeenty-third birthday to you too!" Bilbo replied with a grin. "Both of us well past the Old Took now, and vanished into the lands beyond the West Wind. It's a pity they'll never know about it, back in the Shire. It would do them good. Shake them up a bit."

"The Shire did get a good shaking. Not a happy one," Frodo pointed out. "And from what Sam says, it has changed a good deal since, too. It's not as inward-looking as it was." He laughed. "You're a legend there anyway, even without vanishing behind the West Wind, Sam says. You're Mad Baggins, he who vanishes in a bang and a flash, and reappears with bags of gold and jewels! Mad Baggins the barrel-rider, who can call down fire from the heavens, who dances with Elves beneath the stars, and is pursued by angry dragons that never catch him!"

"A proud legacy!" Bilbo said. "The name of Baggins will never be the same again. No doubt the Sackville-Bagginses are spinning merrily in their graves at the thought."

Elrohir had wandered away from the smoke, over to the top of the cliff face to the east of the tower. He was looking out between the tops of the trees towards the horizon. He stiffened, and his head went up.

"I can see a ship," he said.

"Not one of the Teleri fleet?" Frodo asked, and scrambled to his feet. Maglor followed him to look out too.

"No. Too small. Wrong shape. Wrong direction."

"I can't see it," Bilbo said, frustrated, peering on tip-toes. "It's too far away."

"It has green sails," Elrohir said. He took a deep breath. "And it looks in form like one of the ships of the Anduin."

"Legolas!" Frodo exclaimed.

"Oh dear," Bilbo said.

It should have been good news, that Frodo and Sam would see again their companion with whom they had travelled so far in Middle-earth. But Maglor knew it meant more than that to each of his three companions, for Legolas son of Thranduil would not have left Middle-earth unless Aragorn the King had died.

"I thought I would know," Elrohir said, in a hurt, wondering voice. "I thought even here beyond the Sea, I would know when Estel chose to die."

There was nothing that could possibly be said to that, so Maglor tentatively put a comforting arm around his shoulder, since Bilbo, who had known Elrohir and Aragorn and Arwen too, in Rivendell, was not tall enough to offer such comfort. Elrohir did not seem to mind, and leant against him for a moment.

Then he rubbed a hand down his face and straightened up. "Like losing a younger brother," he said. "Not that I expected to see him again, but... I suppose we had better go down and tell my father."

"Quicker to speak to him mind to mind," Maglor suggested. "It will take us a while to walk down to Avallónë again, and by that time, the ship may be close enough to see from the shore anyway."

"You do it," Elrohir said. So Maglor reached out with his mind to Elrond, just within reach a mile or so below, and very politely and formally, showed him what they had seen, and received grave and equally formal thanks in reply.

. . . . . .

By the time they had made their way back down into Avallónë, the hobbits and Elrohir were exchanging stories about their old friend Aragorn, and about Legolas, too, who, it seemed Elrohir had known from long ago visits to Mirkwood in the days when it had been Greenwood the Great, before the shadow had fallen there.

By the time they had made their way up the long grassy path to the house of Elrond and Celebrían, they were managing to smile at memories of friends in Middle-earth.

Elrond came out to meet them looking as calm and composed as ever, and if Maglor had not known him for a very long time, he would have thought him quite untroubled.

"I've sent a messenger for Galadriel and Celeborn," he said. "Shall we meet them at the harbour?"

They called Sam from the kitchen, where he and Celebrían had been deeply engrossed in icing a large birthday cake together, and set off.

. . . . . .

The green-sailed ship turned cautiously into the wind and hove to, well outside the harbour wall. It seemed that nobody on board was familiar with the harbour at Avallónë.

A low, swift rowing gig put out to meet it, filled with joyful Falmari who hailed the ship enthusiastically. On the sharp blue bow of the gig, huge white gannets with fierce blue eyes sat, and from time to time with a casual flick of a wing, took off, diving in and out of the clear green water ahead.

One of the Falmari called out, a clear call with no discernable words, although it had a music to it. Then she threw up a rope. A great white-winged gannet burst from the waves and caught the rope as it flew, carrying it safely to the people on the ship. Once it was secured, they began to tow it with great care into the harbour-mouth.

The sailors on the ship were Elves clad in green and brown, most of them rather short in stature compared with the Falmari, and considerably shorter than the Noldor on the quayside. They stared up at the tall carved-stone houses of Avallónë wide-eyed.

Elrond called out a courteous greeting to them in a dialect that Maglor had not heard before, but which clearly had Nandorin roots to it. These must, presumably, be Wood-elves. The tallest of them, serious-faced and bright-eyed, who raised a hand to Elrond in greeting, must be Legolas, the grandson of Oropher of Doriath.

Galadriel and Celeborn, who had joined the people waiting on the harbour-side, were smiling in greeting. Oropher's dislike of Celeborn was widely known, but that feud did not extend to Oropher's grandson.

Legolas would very likely have no objection to meeting a son of Fëanor either. Though if he did, no doubt he would get over it: Celeborn had, more or less.

The Falmari brought the ship in and tied it up. Legolas went to the bow, where someone was sitting out of the way of the mast — sleeping, apparently, as Legolas leant down to shake his shoulder.

A short sturdy white-bearded figure started and got up rather stiffly, and Maglor felt an incredulous grin creep onto his face, for this was a new thing in all the land of Aman, something that never had been seen here before in all the long years of his life. One of Aulë's Children had come into the West.

"Gimli!" Frodo called out in delight. "You came!"

Gimli son of Glóin was taller than those of his people that Maglor had known in Middle-earth, and very finely dressed, with cunningly-wrought beads woven into his white hair and beard. Among the Wood-elves in their simple greens and browns, he shone like a fine gem in a plain wooden box.

He was clearly a very old dwarf, by the measure of his people, but still hale and strong. He looked up at Galadriel standing above the ship on the quayside, and bowed low. Rather to Maglor's surprise, Galadriel answered with a deep, full curtsey.

"Welcome, Gimli!" she said. "It has been long since we spoke in Minas Tirith of the way into the West. I am glad to see you have come at last!"

"How could I not?" he said, and made his way up the ladder that the Falmari had set upon the deck. He seemed to have no difficulty with the steps, though Legolas followed him close behind, watching lest the old dwarf should stumble as he climbed.

Gimli reached the top, turned, and with an amused look down at Legolas behind him, extended a hand to help him up the last step. Legolas smiled, took it, and let Gimli pull him up, though it was clear he was in no need of assistance. He looked at least as strong and lithe as any of the Falmari mariners.

Gimli bowed to Galadriel again smiling. "Legolas lost his heart to the Western Sea long ago. Who knows what trouble he might get into in this strange land? I could hardly allow him to go off without me! Not when I had been invited by the very Morning Star of the Elves to join him on his voyage."

Such a regal invitation must have been issued long before Galadriel had returned to Aman, supposedly as a humble penitent, Maglor thought to himself with a private grin. She and Maglor on the same ship, the only ones left of the the rebel princes who had led the Noldor to Middle-earth. He and Galadriel, who had alike been required to sue for pardon, after Morgoth's fall. It was almost as if the Valar could not see how great a distance lay between them.

Galadriel must have been very sure that the Valar would agree to her request on Gimli's behalf. Not that Galadriel had ever been afraid of taking risks.

"You've got here in the nick of time!" Sam told Legolas and Gimli. "It's Frodo and Bilbo's birthday today, did you remember?"

"How could we forget a feast of such importance!" Legolas laughed. "We had hoped that we might come in time, though it was hard to judge, since we did not know quite how far we might have to sail."

"The lady Celebrían and I have made a good big cake, " Sam told them.

"A fine welcome indeed!" Gimli said. "I might have known that even in this strange land of Elves in the west beyond West, you, Sam Gamgee, would have an eye to the food and beer. I'll admit that Elves sing sweet enough songs, but give me hobbits for a reliably well-stocked larder, every time."

"Let us go up to my house," Elrond said. "How many people do you have with you, Legolas? Twenty-six? You are all most welcome to stay with us until you have all decided where you wish to go."

"Or with us," Celeborn offered. "You will find a good few friends from Middle-earth here."

Legolas's Wood-elves looked relieved to hear that. Elrond and Celeborn must seem comfortably familiar figures in this land that they had only heard of in distant tales.

They made their way up through the tall white houses that lined the winding streets of Avallonë, while Frodo and Elrohir introduced Maglor to Gimli and Legolas.

"The House of Fëanor?" Gimli said, considering him with interest, his eyes taking in the rayed star upon Maglor's armrings. "Your star was on the Westgate of Moria. Are you one of the Elves of Hollin, then?"

"Not I," Maglor said. "My nephew, Celebrimbor. I am sure he will be eager to meet you, when he hears that you have come here: he knew many of the House of Durin well, and counted them dear friends. But I fear I never met any of them myself. Our allies among the Dwarves were further west, in Nogrod and in Belegost - that would be Tumunzahar and Gabilgathol, in your tongue. I have fought beside Azaghal of Belegost. A great king and a mighty warrior who did great deeds before at last he fell. He would be a cousin of yours, I think?"

"Cousins! Perhaps in a very distant way," Gimli said, looking taken aback. "But that was so long ago that Azaghal, his kin and all his deeds have passed into legend. My people remember Celebrimbor of Hollin, but Azaghal... that is a name from a very distant age."

"I agree Gimli, it's disconcerting to discover that you're talking to someone who remembers the oldest stories in person," Frodo said. "Worse than talking to Elrond, even, when he suddenly mentions meeting someone you thought never really existed... You'll find it happens here a lot. You do get used to it eventually! I must say though, Maglor, I try not to think about you and Galadriel seeing the Sun rise for the first time. It makes my head ache."

Galadriel laughed. "For so many years I have been called Eldest, I and Celeborn," she said. "But my cousin Maglor here is older far than I. I fear I never met Azaghal, though, Gimli. Though I remember meeting some of his kin, when first we passed the Mountains in the days of the Long Peace, when Nargothrond still stood."

Legolas was speaking quietly with Elrond, and handing him a small packet of letters. Elrond tucked the packet into his coat without looking at it.

Gimli introduced the various Wood-elves, mostly people out of Mirkwood who had followed Legolas to live in Ithilien. It was strange to be introduced to people who might once have been called Nandor or Laiquendi, by a dwarf, but it was clear they all knew Gimli well and considered him a friend. Their expressions of subdued awe did not last long. By the time they had come to the outskirts of the town, Legolas's people were singing.

But once Elrond had welcomed his new guests and Sam had served the birthday cake, he went quietly away up into the orchard with Celebrían, and they did not come back for a long while.

. . . . .

Three days later, many of Elrond's guests and household were sitting by the cliff looking out across the sea. Legolas was teaching Maglor a song he did not know, a wine-making song from the distant land of Dorwinion. Gimli was telling the hobbits news from the Shire that he had heard from a cousin from the Blue Hills.

Erestor, Celebrían and Elrond were playing a game of King's Table, and Celebrían was winning. Maglor suspected that Elrond was letting her win, but could not see the board quite well enough to be sure without standing up.

"What is that?" Celebrían said, pointing out south and west, to the blue waves south of the Long Meadows. "It looks like a little island in the surf."

"There's no island there," Bilbo said confidently. He stared across the cliff-top and blinked in surprise. "Or at least, there never used to be..."

There was an island now, dark grey and rugged, just visible through the sea-mist that wreathed pale around it. High above it, seabirds were shrieking and whirling in shrill alarm, for it was moving, like a mountain walking across the sea bed with the waves crashing around it. There was a sharp smell in the air, as if a storm were coming.

"That's not an island," Maglor said, uneasily. "That is one of the Valar. That is Aulë."

"Is it?" Elrond said, unconcerned. "Perhaps he has come to visit Gimli." Of course, Elrond spoke with Ulmo: presumably visits from the Valar did not trouble him.

They troubled Maglor, but there was no point hiding from a Vala. If they wanted you, you would be found. "He seems to be coming here. We had best go down to meet him."

. . . . . .

Aulë walked ashore onto the white beach below Celebrian's house upon the cliff, the waves crashing fiercely about his vast feet.

Aulë was not always so tall, Maglor remembered, from very long ago, when Aulë had been a friend of his father, and meetings with the Valar had been not unusual. Presumably he had put on this unusually massive form in order to cross the water to the Isle of Exiles more conveniently.

He leant forward, like a landslide, and put out one huge arm. Bilbo made an alarmed noise and jumped backwards.

Fëanor stepped from Aulë's hand down onto the beach.

"Well met!" he said generally to the assembled Elves and Hobbits. His keen eyes fixed on Gimli. Then they went to Maglor, and his eyebrows went up expectantly. Maglor stepped forward hurriedly to make introductions.

"I am delighted to meet you," Fëanor said to Gimli. "I have long regretted that I met no Dwarves in Middle-earth. My son Caranthir has told me a good deal of your people."

Gimli, who usually had fair words ready for almost any occasion, appeared dumbstruck. He stared up at the vast looming figure of Aulë,and then back at Fëanor.

Fëanor looked up too, and frowned. "You are rather too large to speak to at the moment, Aulë" he said critically. "Moderate your size, please!"

There was a rumbling sound that might have been laughter, and then a vast tumbling movement, as if a mountain were somehow folding in on itself, and Aulë re-shaped himself, pulling himself inward into a size less mountainous, until he was no taller than Fëanor himself.

As he did so, his feet sank deep into the white sand, and the sea flowed in towards him.

Fëanor suggested "You might want to reconsider your density."

Aulë's starlike eyes gave him a look that was clearly amusement. He shook himself, massively, and when the shaking had subsided, two bearded Dwarves of equal height stood upon the sand : Gimli son of Glóin, and opposite him, like a sculpture made of dark polished granite, Aulë, the Maker of the Dwarves.

Gimli came out of his moment of startled stillness, and bowed low, and beside him, half a beat behind, Legolas and the hobbits followed.

"Gimli, son of Glóin at your service," Gimli said, "though I hope I have been that all my life, Mahal." He said something more in Khuzdul, but Maglor could not pick out the words. He had picked up a little of the language here and there, but the devotional register was not something that could be picked up in snatches from words overheard in passing.

Aulë bowed, and replied in the same language.

"I suppose we had better let them get the social niceties out of the way," Fëanor said to Maglor. "Are you well?"

"I am perfectly well," Maglor said. "Since when did you ride around with one of the Valar as your steed?"

"It seemed convenient," Fëanor said. "He came to talk to me. We had an argument, and then we agreed that we would go to Tol Eressëa together, and that there was no need to wait for the ferry."

"You had an argument. About...?"

"Plate tectonics. But that doesn't matter. Am I allowed to embrace you? Last time I tried, you were unhappy with me."

"I don't know," Maglor said. "Are you planning to start another war? Have you thought about the implications of arguing with a Vala?"

Fëanor shook his head and smiled. "I don't think life in Middle-earth has done you good," he said. "You have become very serious!"

Maglor stared at him for a moment, turned and walked away along the beach. The sound of waves hushing along the shore filled his mind with a faint, complicated music that was comforting. It blanked out other thoughts.

He came back to himself some considerable time later, and found that he had walked several miles, far past the wide curve of the bay. He rounded a dark spit of rock, and came to a small bay of clear green water enclosed by tall cliffs. From the middle of the bay, a sealion with a shining golden coat watched him quizzically with huge dark eyes.

This was no good. Tol Eressëa was an island. It would take only a few days to walk entirely around it. To take the ferry would mean coming back among Elves, but he could probably steal a small boat that could take him north to the long empty shores that led to Araman.

He had, after all, some practice in theft. The key thing was not to do it with the owners looking on.

He sat down on a rock and wished he had brought his harp. But then, it wasn't essential. Very few things were, once you threw your mind and soul into the sea.

. . . . . .

When the shadows under the cliffs had grown long and dark, Elrond came up, as he used to do every few years in Lindon, carefully making more noise than he needed to so that Maglor would not be surprised.

"I don't think the argument with Aulë was serious," he said. "They seem to be getting on well enough now, Aulë and your father. Gimli and Legolas are telling them about Erebor and the Glittering Caves of Aglarond."

"Oh."

"You know, the Dwarves make an art of argument, but very rarely does it come to more than a scuffle."

"True."

"Your father asked me to tell you he was sorry."

"Did he."

"He wanted to go after you himself," Elrond said. "I thought it might be better not."

Surprised, Maglor twisted to look at him. "And he listened?"

"Do you see him here? He listened."

"I wanted him back the way he was," Maglor said. "Filled with joy and life, not terrifying and bitter and furious. For so long, I wanted that. And he is. He is just like that. But I'm not. I am old and faded." He looked at Elrond. "So are you. Old, anyway."

Elrond looked at him with clear untroubled grey eyes. "That's the choice I made."

"I asked you if you regretted it, once. You said you didn't. But you were very young then."

"I still don't regret it," Elrond said. "Someone has to wait and watch. From the fall of Thangorodrim, to one day, the old man writing in the Fëanorian letters, and making a mistake because the letters are so very old that even they are faded in the mind's eye. And beyond. But my memory doesn't go back so far as far as yours. Stay and watch with me?"

"You have Galadriel for that. And Círdan. Anyway, we're in the West. We're outside the songs of Middle-earth, now."

"You're far too tough to be called faded. You're a little ragged around the edges, that's all. Stay anyway."

"Since it's you that asks, of course," Maglor said, getting up. He gave Elrond an apologetic look. "You should not have to run after me, when Arwen..."

"It made a welcome distraction," Elrond told him. He looked out at the bay, his fair calm face showing no obvious emotion. The sealion was chasing the faint shadows of glittering fish through the clear green water. "Don't write a lament for Arwen."

Maglor shook his head. "I won't. Not unless you ask me to."

"For half of me, it's still too near for songs," Elrond said. "And the other half of me says, it should not be a lament. Not for Arwen or for Aragorn. Arwen chose for love, and she went on, like Lúthien. I know that it was hard for her, at the ending, to be left alone in grief, but..." he seemed to run out of words.

"But death is not the end of the story, and should not overwhelm the rest," Maglor supplied.

"Something like that." Elrond did not look at him. "It sounds more convincing when you say it."

"I can make a song of triumph, one day, if you decide you want one. A convincing one."

"Perhaps in a few years," Elrond said. "Grief loses its edge, with time. For each of the Edain, it fades. Still there, for every one of them, each name, each face. But the edges become less sharp and bitter... Not that I need to tell you that."

"You have told me. It's not the same, for Elves."

"No. No, it isn't. Or it wasn't, in the end. " The shadow of Everlasting Darkness lay behind their thought for a moment. But they had seen it off, at least for now.

"You have had enough of sorrow." Maglor said.

"Perhaps I have." Elrond straightened. "Though I think on the whole, the joy has been worth the grief. I'll stop wallowing in it. It doesn't help."

"Now you tell me. I spent centuries wallowing in grief!"

Elrond looked sideways at him and the edge of his mouth curled up. "You're a singer and a poet. You're supposed to do that sort of thing!"

"Oh, and Master Elrond has never been known to indulge in writing songs or poetry," Maglor said. "Strictly a worthy lore-master and a healer, buried in old books and scrolls written by other people. No songs, no unwise flames blazing against the Night... You can't fool me with that calm wise face, you know."

"I wasn't trying to! There did come a time when Fëanorian fury against the way the world was made did not seem an answer."

"Really." Maglor said. "And sending Sauron's One Ring in the hands of Frodo Baggins to the fires of Mordor, with Elros's heir, Thranduil's son and one of the House of Durin together to look after him, was a calm and wise acceptance of the way the world was ordered, was it? Forgive me for my mistake! It was only that it sounded to me as if you had decided to furiously fling events back into the hands of the Allfather. Exactly the kind of thing my father would do."

"It was not!" Elrond said, now laughing openly. " He would have insisted on going himself."

"I'm surprised you didn't!"

"That was my next plan. For Galadriel, Glorfindel, Círdan and I to try to do what Finrod and his Ten tried. Gil-galad was always very firm that there should always be another plan."

"Sauron's legions would have made mincemeat of you."

"Yes. Just enough strength to make him angry, not enough to hurt. I might even have been desperate enough to call on you, by then, Oath or no Oath."

"Then Sauron would certainly have made mincemeat of us."

Elrond shrugged. "It would have made a fine song. Sometimes that's enough... I thought of calling on Ulmo, but I don't think he would have come."

"No? He has seemed very willing to follow your suggestions recently."

"An exception for one person is not the same as saving an entire land and all its people." Elrond said. He looked out again at the sealion bobbing on the green water. "Is it, grandfather?" he said.

The sealion put its head on one side and narrowed its huge eyes for a moment. Then it gave a lithe flip and came surging in toward the white shelving sand, where it pulled itself out of the water.

As the water surged with it, its form changed. The sleek golden coat became long wet golden hair and a long loosely-fitted tunic, and the lithe form broadened and stood up, becoming an enormously tall blue-eyed Man who from his looks could only be one of the House of Hador.

He shook his head sending clear drops of water flying. "You know my mouth isn't designed for talking when it's that shape, Elrond!" he said.

"Tuor, son of Huor, I take it," Maglor said. "You look very much like your father of heroic memory." Tuor, presumably, was not eager to wreak vengeance for the Havens of Sirion where he had once been lord. He had had ample opportunity before Elrond had arrived.

"Yes," Elrond said. "My grandfather Tuor, my foster-father Maglor son of Fëanor."

Tuor said, "I know. I have been keeping watch. You said you were concerned someone might throw him into the sea."

Maglor gave Elrond an enquiring look. "That was a long while ago," Elrond explained. "When first we came here. I wasn't sure what to expect."

"No-one was." Maglor looked at Tuor. "I'm a little surprised that you would want to stop it though. Or were you planning to join in?"

Tuor looked down at him for a long thoughtful moment. "I think that if I wanted to throw you into the sea, I would not need assistance." Maglor was not so sure about that, but looking at Tuor's formidable frame, he was glad it had not come up. For that matter, he was glad that Tuor had not been at the Havens of Sirion when he and his brothers had come there.

"Tol Eressëa is at peace, and under the rule of law," Tuor told him. "I wouldn't consider it for that reason, if there were no other! But it is you Elves who hang onto things forever. I was angry when I heard about the Havens, but that was long ago. You can't be forever looking back. But there was a chance that some fool might hold a grudge. And I did go away and leave them all behind, after all. Idril never would have done that, if it had not been for me. I hold no grievance against you, Maglor, son of Fëanor. I only thought I would try to mend what I could, even if it was far too late."

"That is what I have tried to do myself," Maglor told him, pleased. "I thank you for the thought, though I'm glad that I did not need the help. And it seems it's not too late after all... I wondered why I had not met you."

Tuor laughed, a great deep laugh. "My wife prefers not to draw attention to me, I, the only Man in Aman. Or not quite in Aman... I stay on the Lonely Isle, or on my ship Eärrámë when I am not with Ulmo. Poor Idril feared for a long time that Aman would not be good for me, or that Lord Námo would swoop on me and carry me off."

"I thought Idril said very little about you! She did not mention you were a skinchanger. I suppose... there is Elwing. Still, I thought that was Lúthien's heritage, not Beren's."

"All peoples have their secrets." Tuor said. "Ulmo has been a good friend and a generous lord. Though since Elrond brought his hobbit friends with him, it seems that I am no longer the lone exception to all the rules."

"There is a Dwarf, too, now," Elrond said. "Gimli son of Glóin has come to Tol Eressëa."

"Has he? Ah, I miss all the news, in the ocean! Now that is interesting," Tuor said, narrowing his eyes. "Why was a Dwarf permitted to come here?"

"Friendship." Elrond said. "He is a friend of Legolas of the greenwood and Galadriel, too. And Frodo and Sam, for that matter. Aulë spoke for him."

"Hm. As if there had been no other friendships broken, all these long years!" Tuor said, rather tactlessly, in Maglor's opinion. But perhaps Tuor did not know about Arwen.

"Yes," Elrond said. "But there is a change. I see it, like ripples spreading from pebbles thrown into still water."

"Is there!" Tuor said, a delighted smile spreading across his face. "Even here, where so much is held unchanged in memory. The tide changes twice a day, but even the wind must change at last. I'm glad to hear it. Only Elves could wish things to stay the same forever!"

"And not, by any means, all of us," Maglor told him.

"I'm glad we met you," Elrond said to Tuor. "Maglor's father is at my house, with Aulë. You have met Maglor now at last. Will you come back with us and meet Fëanor too?"

"Oh!" Tuor said and his blue eyes widened a little. "Fëanor himself has returned from death? And the Valar permitted this? Truly there is a new wind stirring!"

. . . . . .

At the long white house of Elrond and Celebrían, set high upon the clifftop, they found Aulë, still no taller than a dwarf, with Gimli and the hobbits all sitting cross-legged upon the grass. Fëanor, Celebrían, Elrohir and Legolas were lounging next to them, and next to Elrohir, upright and self-possessed, sat Galadriel.

Gimli and the hobbits were smoking pipes, and someone was shaping the smoke with word and thought into dancing figures of elves and dwarves and deer and tall cranes with outspread wings and crowns of feathers. Maglor recognised his father's touch, and someone else too, something which had a very distinctive air of Galadriel to it.

As they came up, a very small, but very real-looking golden dragon popped into existence, and chased the fleeing smoke-dancers flaming over the edge of the cliff. Legolas started in surprise as it ran past him and spread its wings.

"Show-off!" Fëanor exclaimed. He considered the dragon, which was now prancing joyfully along the cliff-top. "I like the claws," he admitted. "Very elegant."

"Thank you," Aulë said, in his voice that somehow always sounded as though there were flames crackling along the edges of it. "Less unplanned than your carefree dancers, I fear. It was made before. I only moved the world a little so it would be here."

"It's lovely!" Celebrían exclaimed.

"It is," Elrond agreed.

Celebrían looked around. "Tuor!" she cried delightedly and flung her arms around him. "This is Elrond's grandfather," she told them. "One of them, anyway. This is Fëanor, who is another of Elrond's grandfathers, Tuor! You probably know about him. And Legolas, Gimli, and Sam, Frodo and Bilbo and my mother and... Aulë. Do you know Aulë? Well, obviously you know him, I expect you know everyone. What I really mean is, have you been introduced? You have now, anyway... He's visiting. Well, everyone is visiting! It's like Rivendell. Only we never had any of the Ainur visiting in Rivendell, apart from Mithrandir, and Radagast and Curunir too, I suppose, but let's not think about him . Do you want some wine? Or beer? The hobbits like beer best."

"Thank you,Celebrían," Tuor said. "I would prefer beer."

Bilbo had gone over to the little dragon, staring in fascination, and extended a hand. It hunched its back and raised its wings, hissing at him, pouring smoke from its nostrils. Then, abruptly, it fell over on its side and paddled its feet in the air, wriggling, with something that looked very much like a smile on its shining face.

Fëanor narrowed his eyes. "Its behaviour seems surprisingly autonomous," he said.

Aulë looked, if it was possible for one of the Valar to look that way, a little embarrassed. "It has a cat in it," he admitted. "It was not my own idea! It was the cat's. He dreamed that body."

"And so you made the body and gave him a little help climbing into it?" Fëanor enquired, looking very amused.

"He is only a cat," Aulë said. "If he takes joy in dreams of a body of polished bronze, hissing flame and soaring wings, what harm in giving him one?"

Fëanor opened his mouth, then looked at Maglor and closed it again.

"Long ago, you used to lecture your students fiercely on the unwisdom of creating animated forms, or catching any spirit in the solid," Galadriel said to Aulë, with a smile that had a definite mischief to it. "Your views on the topic were forcefully expressed, I recall."

"Yes." Aulë said, and paused for thought, frowning.

"Surely," Gimli said, very respectfully, "one must consider a certain degree of..."

Maglor sighed. "I will fetch some more beer," he said. "And wine, for me, at least. Father, will you come and help me carry the jugs?"

. . . . . .

In the courtyard behind the house, a party was taking place. A number of Elrond's people and Legolas's Wood-elves were dancing in a long joyful line to the music of pipes, all around the courtyard and up into the orchard.

Maglor introduced his father to those who were not dancing, and took some joy in making Celebrían's helper Fingaeril blush by introducing her personally and listing all her family and their deeds back to her great-great-grandfather who had followed Fëanor from Tirion.

Then they went into the kitchen to find jugs of ale and wine, and he closed the door firmly to shut out both people and music.

Fëanor looked at him, and waited.

"I am not who I was," Maglor admitted, after a moment. "I have killed, and killed... you would have been horrified. I often thought that. No making, no joy to any of it, only death. I learned so many ways to kill, and achieved so little. Every time we tried, it just made things worse. Even when we got them back, we could not touch them, and then Maedhros..." he stopped himself.

"Yes, I know," his father said. "Would it help to blame me?"

"You would have found some way to win."

"But I didn't. I died and fled the field, and left you to it."

"There must have been a better way," Maglor said. "There must have been a way out. You might have found it. They burned us."

"It wasn't a puzzle to be solved. I do make mistakes, you know."

"Yes," Maglor said. "I have noticed. Alqualondë was a large one. And Losgar. Not to mention your appalling lack of caution in the face of Balrogs."

"Yes."

"You could not have known how desperately we would need help."

"No."

There was a long moment of quiet, while the pipes played gaily outside in the courtyard.

"Fingolfin should not have goaded you, but you should have had more sense than to heed him," Maglor said at last.

"Your mother has been quite eloquent on that point," Fëanor said.

"You should have left Amrod and Amras with mother. And Curufin, and Celebrimbor."

"Do you think they would have agreed to that?"

"I don't know. You should have anyway, except it would have weakened our defence appallingly, and it was weak enough already. "

"If you say so," Fëanor said with a cautious expression that looked very out of place on his face.

"They should have come to aid us before you died," Maglor said. "They should have, if they are better than we are. Fingolfin, Fingon and Finrod came, despite the Ice. They could have helped them, if they had come sooner. Elrond and Elros, Elwing, Eluréd, Elurín. All the people of Hithlum and Dorthonion and the March and Doriath. Good old Azaghal and all his Dwarves. Poor Huor and Húrin! The thralls of Angband. All punished for what we did at Alqualondë, and waiting on a Silmaril to call for aid. And they said you cared for nothing but your gems!"

"Makalaurë... Maglor. I am unsure what you want. Am I to be misled, mistaken or malign? Inspired, betrayed or simply foolish?"

"I don't know. Which are you?" Maglor said, and sat down, arms crossed tight across his chest.

"My sadly battered pride is much flattered by the thought that you'd still call me inspired," Fëanor said, folding lithely into a chair on the other side of Celebrían's kitchen table. "But I have seven very able sons, and I refuse to salve my own pride by suggesting that they are fools, or that I could have done better. I would prefer not to be thought malign. As for being betrayed, I never expected anyone to come rushing to my aid, the Valar least of all... You know, there was a time when you would have thought it all worth it, for the songs."

"There was a time," Maglor said, with precision, "When I was a young idiot with eyes full of stars, who followed trustingly without asking important questions."

"Well, yes. That too. But still, they are very good songs, Maglor. They might not be worth the grief, but they are good songs."

"If ever we go to war again, I'm going to give you strategy lessons," Maglor said. "With particular reference to not getting killed. Elrond can help."

"I expect it's a skill that can be learned," Fëanor said. "As long as you don't expect me to have your talent at it."

"Are you suggesting that I am craven?" Maglor asked pointedly.

His father looked at him in horror. "No!" he said.

"Because I am, and I was," Maglor told him. "This I have learned: there's no virtue to being fearless. The Enemy wanted to torture us. He wanted to lock us into endless war, pain and misery, without even the release of death. Not being afraid of him was madness. Refusing help or compromise was madness too."

"And that is lesson one, is it?" Fëanor said. He looked pale, and he was breathing a little quickly but he still had not lost his temper. He sat there across the table, bright-eyed and quite definitely alive. Maglor noticed again that his father was not wearing a sword, and did not seem to feel the lack of one. He rubbed at the hilt of his own sword with his thumb, wondering if the pattern could really still be felt or if he was only calling it back from memory.

"You sit there trying to make me angry," Fëanor said, "and then you tell me you are craven. You, who won two Silmarils : one by war and one by persuasion, the only one of my sons who lived. Call yourself what names you wish: I am not going to argue with you."

"No, you'll only argue with the Valar!" Maglor said.

"I argued with Aulë," Fëanor said. "Long ago I was his student. He is, I suppose, so far as any of the Valar can be anyone's friend, my friend."

"He refused to consider letting you return from Mandos for years!" Maglor said. " _Not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains_ , they said, and Finrod was torn by the wolves. _Tears unnumbered_ they said, and death was Fingon's reward. _By weapon and by torment and by grief,_ they said, and in the iron hells our people slaved and suffered under the whips of the orcs and yet had little pity. They knew what we were facing when we had no idea what torment meant. He was part of that. How could you forget that?"

"I haven't forgotten. Those seem excellent reasons for arguing with him. You are my son, and you are shouting at me. And then there is Fingolfin!"

"He was an excellent king," Maglor said deliberately, "dearly beloved by all."

"So I am told," Fëanor said, meeting his eyes.

Maglor put his face in his hands.

Fëanor got up and walked around the table to put an arm around him. Maglor gripped onto it with one hand.

"Your enormous friend Tuor must have worked up quite a thirst by now," Fëanor said, after a little while. "For that matter, you look as though you could use a drink yourself. I do have a reason for wishing to talk with Aulë. You might even admit it to be a good one, once you've heard all about it. Now, where is this wine you mentioned? "


	5. Ch 5: West of the Moon, East of the Sun

Notes:  
[ It may help if I remind you that in this series, Maglor married his unnamed wife in Beleriand and lost her in the Dagor Bragollach: he suspected but did not know that she was one of the many Elves caught by orcs and taken to Angband as a thrall at that time.] 

* * *

Nienna rarely visited the great stable and the shadowy meadows of the Halls of Mandos, that long ago had been built by Oromë, when Nienna's brother Námo had found, to his considerably surprise and confusion, that his Halls were filling up with hounds and horses.

Since then, cats had begun to frequent the place too, sliding in and out of shadowy stalls, and sleeping on hay that was not entirely there.

Nienna suspected that Oromë, who rarely was expected to build anything, had got a little carried away. Stables meant only for the ghosts of horses surely did not need to have mice. And that small red creature that was peering quizzically at her now, half-hidden behind a tuft of grass, was not even a cat! It looked suspiciously like a fox. Nienna was fairly sure that foxes were not supposed to be self-aware enough to need an afterlife.

She ignored it, and walked on, through tossing manes and tails, dreams of hooves drumming on firm turf, of sweet grass and wind rushing across wide hillsides, until she found the spirit she was looking for. It was a daunting sight: an arched crest black as night, massive heavy hooves, and a small hard eye with a mischief to it. The other horses seemed to be keeping their distance from it. It saw Nienna approaching, tossed its head and showed her a set of huge yellow teeth.

She stopped at some distance from it, and bowed gravely. "I wish to request your aid," she said. "For someone who was, I believe, your friend."

The horse backed away, and swished its tail. So far as Nienna could tell, it did not appear cooperative. She sent it an image, as she might have done to an Elf, but could not tell if the horse had recognised it. Well, either it would come, or it would not. She turned and walked away. After a few steps, she glanced behind, and saw the horse take a cautious step after her, and then another.

She went away through the long empty halls of Mandos, past strong doors and endless walls covered in intricate weavings, until she came to a place where there were no shadows, only a strong, brilliant light that spilled from every wall and from the high curved ceiling, too.

Those who stayed in this place carried their own shadows, shades that flickered pale among the brilliance, but they preferred the light: as much light as could be given them. They rarely made forms for themselves, the people of the Hall of Light, for forms made shadows, and those who came to the Hall of Light no longer remembered shape without fearing it terribly.

Nienna took off her own form and walked among them as light, speaking comfort without using names, for there were no names here any more. She wept for them, the nameless ones, and they gathered around her, so faint that they were barely there at all.

Into that great white hall the tall black horse stepped proudly, head up and ears forward, curious, but it seemed, not afraid. The spirits of horses held their own forms clear in mind, as a general rule, even when they held little else in memory. The horse was as clear in its own thought as if it had been truly there in body.

The shades scattered away from it, the darkness of it, the solidity of its form, fleeing to brighter, calmer places. All save one, which hesitated, torn, half its spirit turning, longing to flee and the other half pulled forward as if the horse were tugging at it.

The horse stepped forward, leant its great long neck down, and nudged. Nienna moved forward in concern, but the spirit caught between longing and fleeing was not alarmed. It folded forward a little and leaned against the horse's neck. Looking at it with all the perception of the Valar, Nienna could see the faintest suggestion of arms beginning to form, and then at least two fingers of a hand — no, three, then four — reaching up to rub at the very base of the horse's neck.

"I wish you joy," Nienna said, and she wept.

. . . . . .

The stars were coming out over Tol Eressëa: a clear night and not cold, with the sighing of the sea gentle in the distance below the cliffs.

Fëanor, delight sharp upon his face, had taken the shells that Celebrían had scattered around her garden, set each upside down to catch a drop of dew, and then called starlight into each small cup, so that the whole garden shone as if set among the stars.

Galadriel was watching him across the lawn, as he set light into the last few shells, eyes narrowed with concentration.

She spoke to Elrond, mind to mind, sending an image of herself long ago in Alqualondë under stars outside the mountains, calling starlight into a shell.

 _I can remember that. I remember the joy of calling light into a drop of water, only for the joy of speaking light, and not because the darkness is terrible and must be held back with every last scrap of strength._

Elrond looked at Fëanor too, and smiled.

 _Maglor says he was like that, when Maglor was young._

 _I don't remember him ever being like that. I remember him rude and demanding, with doom hanging on the edge of every word._

Images swirled into Elrond's mind: Fëanor's sharp face set and angry, torches flickering, a crowd in darkness, voices with a sharp edge of fear to them.

 _I remember him proud and bitter, speaking words of power. And then later, shadowed and bloodstained._

An echo of a battle that had been all the more terrible for being unplanned.

Elrond gave her a wry smile and showed her starless shadow hanging over Beleriand in ruins. Foul things scuttled through it, and he folded over it an image of the ruin of Rhovanion and a flicker of the carnage at the gates of Mordor, then very briefly, Maedhros, stern-faced with a sword that shone bright, facing a werewolf with bloody jaws, and then far away, a star that was a Silmaril. _In all my years, I don't remember darkness being anything but terrible._

 _You and Gil-galad both. It becomes easier to see the shades in shadow once you have lived in terror under darkness._

Galadriel sent an image of the Trees of Light, as seen from Tirion, and then, very deliberately, a face that had seemed a kindly friend, who had only lied and lied. Then much later, another, then one more, sent as a friend, who in the end had not been.

Honeyed voices, easy to listen to.

 _I have learned that in brilliant and endless light, the dissenting voice sounds harsh and foolish. Shadows are either too sharp-edged or cannot be seen at all. A painful lesson._

 _He'll make a better friend than an enemy._

A vision of blood upon the quays of Alqualondë. _He made a bad enemy._

A vision of storm-clouds over Númenor. _He's not the only one._

 _Truth_. A breath of impossible biting cold, grim faces marching over ice faded. In the far distance, grey ships were dwindling into western mist as the last light fled and darkness fell. A sense of loss, bitter as the ice, Celebrían's face, and Eärwen's.

Finarfin in armour with a sword upon his belt and his face twisted in grief, looking back.

Elrond himself in Rivendell, standing while the world fell apart around him.

 _You stayed to see it through. If you are his friend, he is my friend._

Elrond glanced at Aulë, sitting gravely listening and nodding, as Gimli spoke passionately of knowledge lost when the dragon came to Erebor: the crafts that had, with difficulty been remade, and those that despite all the ingenuity of the People of Durin, seemed lost forever.

 _In Valimar, they sing a good many songs of peace and joy, having known nothing else. Perhaps this night we should sing of what we have learned of exile._

. . . . .

Sam tapped Frodo and Bilbo on the shoulder, as the singing went on under the stars.

"Could I have a private word?" he asked. They followed him into the house, where lamps were lit. He looked very serious.

"What's up, Sam?" Frodo asked.

"I've got it in my mind that... well, maybe it's time."

"Time?" Frodo asked, confused.

"Time to go on to the next thing," Sam told him. "Wherever Rosie's gone, and Strider, and Merry, and Pippin..."

"What? But why?" Bilbo asked, looking startled. "You know Elrond says that time isn't so pressing, here. Not like in Middle-earth. No need to go until we're weary and choose to leave. And we're very happy here!"

"It's not that I'm not happy, exactly, " Sam said. "But I am... well, a bit weary of it all to be honest with you. I'm glad to have seen Valinor, that no hobbit but us has ever seen before. The white city of Tirion and the great mountains and the ships, and hearing the songs under the stars. Meeting the great heroes out of the stories. A great thing to remember, that is, more than I ever dreamed of when I was a hobbit-lad who longed to hear the songs of Elves. Now I've met all these fair folk and can call many of them friends, and had my aches and pains sorted out to boot. But it's not for forever, is it? Not for us."

"No, of course not," Frodo said. "They can't withhold the Gift of Men, everyone has told us that. But we were told there was no urgency, and the choice of time was ours. It's hard enough to keep time in mind here anyway."

"That's true, and of course we had to wait till Master Elrond had his family affairs all sorted out, and help him with that where we could," Sam said. "It wouldn't have been right to go hurrying off before that job was done, since we were very kindly given the choice. But now, that seems to be all taken care of. And.. well. The thing is, they've all gone. Very likely even my little girl Elanor by now as well, and all the rest except maybe Tom, my youngest. Here we all are, older than any hobbit has ever been. And I miss my Rosie. What if she's waiting for me and wondering what's taking me so long? It's not like I have a job to do this time. I'm just on a holiday, and it's been a long one."

"Oh, Sam," Frodo said, and sighed. "Well, perhaps you are right. I'd dearly love to see Strider again, and Arwen, too, not to mention Merry and Pippin, if that's a thing that can be. And even good old Fatty and Folco, too. It's not right to keep you here if you are tired of all of it. And you're right that none of this is meant for hobbits."

"Well, I'm not tired of Valinor at all!" Bilbo said, looking indignant. "And I'm older than the pair of you by quite some way. And a Baggins of Bag End at that: the most hobbity of all the hobbits, or so I like to think!"

"A Baggins!" Sam said and laughed. "I'm sorry Mr Bilbo, I don't mean any offense, but if you ever were a Baggins at heart, nobody could call you one now! You're more Took than any Took I ever did meet! Didn't you go running off with Dwarves to rob a dragon, long before we were born? And didn't you find the Shire too dull for you, and run away again to live among the Elves and write poetry? What's more Tookish than that?"

"Well, Sam Gamgee, if you'd said that in the Shire, I'd have to take the gravest offence!" Bilbo said. "But here in Valinor among the Elves where there are so few decent hobbits around to be outraged, I suppose it's not worth arguing over."

"Oh, what utter nonsense, Bilbo!" Frodo said laughing. "You said only the other day how proud you were of being Mad Baggins and vanishing in a puff of smoke!"

Sam looked at Bilbo with a thoughtful expression that somehow made him look much older, though he was by some years the youngest.

"You know, when you were in the Shire, Mr Bilbo, you were always off visiting with Gildor's people or popping off for a week or so here and there, to celebrate the Elvish New Year, or the springtide, or Midsummer. Even when you were at home, you were always writing away. Not that I'm not glad that you took the time to teach me my letters and tell me tales of Elves, and get me started writing poetry! I owe you more than I can say for that: it wasn't many in those days who would have spent their time on listening to poems by a gardener's boy."

"Oh, really, it was nothing at all," Bilbo said, very pink and shuffling his feet.

"You must admit, you aren't at all the usual kind of hobbit," Sam went on. "One of a kind, Mr Bilbo is, everyone used to say, and they were right."

"Well yes, but..." Bilbo spluttered.

"If ever there was a Took who took a fairy wife, like in the stories, Mr Bilbo, then maybe you do belong here after all. You've lived with the Elves far more years than you were ever in the Shire, after all."

"I don't think you can become an Elf by wishing it, Sam!" Bilbo said.

"Maybe not. But you said it yourself. It suits you here. You aren't tired of it at all. And I am. There's nothing wrong with me, nothing you could pin down and say, ah, that Sam Gamgee, he's got a dicky leg or a gammy heart or a palsy or the gripes. Only a weariness, and a longing."

"Have you spoken of this with Elrond?" Frodo asked him. "He might be able to help."

"I'm not going to Elrond about this, when he's still fresh grieving for his daughter, poor lad!" said Sam Gamgee.

"Poor lad?" Bilbo said. "Elrond's thousands of years older than you are, young Sam!"

"He is, yet still it's the first time he's lost a daughter," Sam said steadfastly. "A hard thing, that, very hard for anyone. But I did talk about it with Gandalf. And no he can't and I'm not sure I'd want him to anyway. I've had a long life and it was mostly a happy one. I'm a great-grand-dad. I was Mayor seven times — and I helped you save the Shire, Frodo, and I got to enjoy it afterwards, even if you didn't. It's enough. I thought I'd wait for you to say it first, but now I think it's time, if only for me."

"No!" Frodo said and he took Sam's hand. "We'll go on together this time," he said. "A hundred and seventy-three years is enough for me. We'll go to find Rosie, and the Gaffer and Strider, and Pip and Merry and all of them. Queen Arwen, too. But I think you should stay, Bilbo. You can always come along later."

"I can indeed Frodo," Bilbo said, with a smile that was tearful around the edges. "But not yet! I've got far too much to do and see and hear. Two hundred and fifty-one years — well, that's no time at all!"

Frodo smiled back. "It's true that it's no time at all if almost all your friends are Elves!" he said. "And most of the rest were Dwarves. Two hundred and fifty-one isn't ancient for them. And they have some arrangement with Aulë, don't they?"

"They're very mysterious about it," Bilbo told him. "But they don't leave with the rest of us, anyway. That's another thing I must ask about! I said I had a lot to do."

"Old Strider," Sam said thoughtfully. "I hadn't thought of it before, but he started off with the Elves, and went off to be with Men. But you started off a hobbit, and went as far as possible in the other direction."

"Yes," Bilbo said. "He said something like that, the last time I saw him, before you all went off from Rivendell. Yet I remember Aragorn in Rivendell when he was little Estel, Elrond's foster-son. He could have been an elf-child then, with flowers in his hair. Ah well. Perhaps we'll all get to catch up eventually."

"We will," Frodo said, and embraced him. "I am sure of it. We'll give Elrond a while before we tell him, shall we, Sam?" he suggested. "And then, perhaps he'd like us to take a message, if that can be done. Perhaps it can't. Perhaps you can't take anything with you, even words. But there's no harm trying."

. . . . . . . .

But the next day, there was no need to tell Elrond. He knew.

"I am very accustomed to my guests deciding in the end to leave," he said to Sam, very kindly. "It's not hard to see the signs, after so many have come and gone. The Edain were with us for a long time, in Rivendell."

"It's not that we don't appreciate all that you've done for us here," Frodo said, feeling awkward. "You and Celebrían and Galadriel and everybody. You have all been so very kind. It's just that, well..."

"You have another place that you need to go," Elrond said gravely. "This isn't your home, as it is ours."

"It's not," Sam said, "It's very nice here, but it's not ours. Not how we're made, if you take my meaning."

"And you have people that you long to see again," Elrond said with sympathy. "I understand. Frodo has had a chance to heal from his wounds now, and Bilbo, too. We will miss you, but if you are sure the time has come, Mithrandir has told me how to make the arrangements here."

"Only two arrangements, Elrond, please!" Bilbo said. "Frodo and Sam have made their minds up to go, but I'm not the least bit weary. I'd much prefer to stay for a while. Well, for as long as I can, if that's all right. I'd rather stay for good, but I'm not sure if that's allowed."

Elrond looked down at him, eyes grey as star-filled skies wide for a moment, and then folded down upon his knees so that he could almost look Bilbo square in the face.

"You want to stay?" he said, wonderingly.

"Well, yes," Bilbo told him. "I like it here, you know. It feels like home, here among the Elves, and it seems that nobody is hurrying to shuffle me out through the door. You and Gandalf are my oldest friends, after all."

Elrond flung his arms around him.

Bilbo, surprised, put his arms around his neck to pat Elrond on the back. "There there," he said. "It's not everyone would want a silly old hobbit about the place!"

"I do!" Elrond said.

After a moment, Elrond stood up again. He took a deep breath and was his usual wise and ageless self again. "You might wish to stay just a little longer, Sam, Frodo," he said. "It was you who always wanted to see Elf-magic, was it not, Sam? There's one last thing that I think you might like to see, before you go on, if you can stand to wait a little longer."

. . . . . . .

Aulë strode out into the bay, growing taller and taller as he waded into the sea. Green waves were crashing around his knees, but he strode onwards, tall now as a mountain that springs from the seabed, moving North and East with the seabirds calling around his head and the sea-mist shimmering around his knees like a cloud.

Beside him moved the ship of Eärwen the Queen, lent, for this occasion, to her daughter and her eldest son. It was not one of the swan-ships of long ago, elegant and slim, built for kindly coastal waters and the sea under stars, but a craft painted black and white with the livery of the storm petrel, strong and swift, made for wider waters, made to ride the sunlight on the Open Sea.

Long ago, Fëanor and his sons and people had passed this way in stolen ships, and Uinen herself, the Lady of the Sea, had risen and called storms upon them in her grief. But now the sea was clear and bright, and the deeps below them glowed green like a great emerald. Fish and seals flickered through them, shining, and on their bow wave rode porpoises.

The Sun sank golden towards the distant line of Aman behind them, and almost dead ahead, the silver disk of Tilion appeared above the line of the horizon, reflecting in a scatter of bright shards across the water.

The sky was darkening, but it was too soon yet to see the stars, all save one, for he had been invited.

They heard a distant sound beyond the waves, a sound of great deep horns calling.

"The horns of the Ulumúri," Galadriel said quietly.

"Yes," Finrod said, and looked up speculatively at the mast in the growing moonlight. "He is coming. Time to reef the sails, I think." The Falmari were already moving, adjusting the halyards and turning the trim little ship bows to the running sea.

The waves were building and the motion of the ship more urgent. Sam gripped onto the side with both hands, and looked back at Frodo with a mixture of alarm and excitement in his face.

Far ahead a dark line spread across the bright water, racing towards them, taller and taller, a great wave filled with all the power of the Sea. Ulmo had come to meet them.

Aulë took a single great mountain-step forward, and the force of their joyful meeting sent a great spray of foam high into the air.

Where Aulë's voice was like flame and stone falling, Ulmo's was like the grind of shingle on the shore, and the rush of waves. They did not speak in words.

"Well I never did!" Sam said. "The sea's a person! Or is it a person who is the sea? This is your friend Ulmo, is it, Elrond?"

"I wonder if he has fish swimming around inside him," Bilbo said. "Do you think it tickles?"

Elrond laughed down at him. "I'll admit, I have never asked him," he said.

. . . . . .

Fëanor went to the stern, and looked up at the Valar, looming vastly above against the sky, outlined against the last golden light of Arien, and the first silver light of Tilion.

"This feels like more or less the right place," he said to them. "Shall we get to work?" He did not raise his voice: they would have heard him if he had whispered.

Aulë held out a vast rocky hand, and Fëanor stepped onto an enormous finger-tip and was lifted high. A considerable part of him was quietly terrified, and he ignored it with determination.

Somewhere far below him in the dark water was a faint and distant point of light.

He reached out with his mind and touched it, gently, reverently.

One Silmaril answered at once, as if it had been waiting for him, hidden in the dark abyssal depths of the ocean.

The other was hidden far deeper, buried deep within the living rock of Arda, wrapped in a cocoon of pain and darkness, its light entirely hidden. It hurt to speak with it, and as he touched it, Fëanor wept. And yet, it was still alive, still filled with the living light that was the light of trees held forever in memory, and more than that too, the Light of Sun and Moon and Star.

Ulmo knelt, if a wave can kneel and wrapped vast half-translucent protective hands around the ship, which from up here, high in Aulë's mountainous hands, looked like a chip of floating bark.

Fëanor took a deep breath, and concentrated all the fire of his burning spirit, feeling himself an infinitesimally tiny spark of light, surrounded by the looming shades of the great Powers of Earth and Water.

Fëanor called out, words in a language never meant to be spoken by Elf or Man.

Around his voice, two voices immeasurably greater spoke.

And beneath them, though broken by war, buried beneath six thousand years, lost outside the Round World, and hidden beneath the ocean, Beleriand awoke, and wrapped around a Silmaril, began to rise.

The water roared, pouring away white and foaming into the deeps, as the first dark peaks began to break the surface, a great white mist forming all across the water as far as Fëanor could see. It hid the tiny ship below from view.

As the great mountains of the Crissaegrim and of Ered Wethrin began to shoulder massively into sight in the growing moonlight, Ulmo and Aulë stepped backwards, one pace, and then another, and another.

Now the Mountains of Mithrim and the Ered Lómin were rising into view, and further east, a great mass that Fëanor had never seen in life, but from the careful sketches that Finrod had drawn must be the highlands of Dorthonion, was lifting in the moonlight. The lowlands of East Beleriand and the Falas spread out, wide and wider, as Ulmo stepped backwards, hands still carefully wrapped around the tiny ship, and the roaring waves followed him west into the far distance.

The roaring faded, and far below his feet, Beleriand Risen shone in the light of the moon.

. . . . . .

Aulë was dwindling in size again, and Fëanor looked down, judging his moment, and leapt before the hand became awkwardly small to stand on. He landed lightly, and found himself standing on dark wet rock beside a deep chasm that might, from the position of the mountains all around him, once have been Lake Mithrim.

Gleaming on the wet sand a little way away, illuminating the wet ground and casting great shadows from the rocks up into the bare mountains, there lay a Silmaril.

Fëanor picked it up cautiously with a small pair of tongs from his pocket, and pushed it into a thick leather bag. Nobody was here to see, after all, apart from Aulë, who for all his faults was not a gossip.

Eärendil's silmaril, passed hand to hand by a kinsman with the favour of the Valar on him had not burned him, but this gem had been stolen many times, and might behave differently. If it did, he was keen to take measurements of the exact methodology of the burns. Asking Maglor or Maedhros to assist with testing it would not be wise or tactful, but Curufinwë would very likely be prepared to help.

Aulë had reduced himself to the height of a Dwarf again, and was looking at Fëanor with his bearded head on one side and his starlike eyes twinkling. Strange to be looking down on one of the Valar. It made him seem somehow easier to speak to: less utterly strange and different, though one could hardly forget his power.

"It will need some work," Fëanor said to him, looking around at bare rock and sand. "But still, I give you my thanks for your help."

"Do you?" Aulë said, looking oddly pleased. "That gives me joy."

Fëanor was not entirely sure that he had any desire to give any of the Valar joy, but he restrained himself from saying so. Aulë had, in fact, been helpful.

"What of the second?" Aulë asked. There was no visible sign of the second Silmaril, though Fëanor could feel its presence, far below and a long way East of where they now stood.

"It is within this land," Fëanor told him. "I do not intend to remove it. It can stay where it is."

"You would hide its light?" Aulë asked.

"Its light has been hidden for well over six thousand years, " Fëanor told him. "I am not keeping it to myself, if that is what you mean. It has become a gem of the earth. You, of all people, can surely see the difference."

"A light in the heart of the land," Aulë said, and smiled. "That seems fitting to me, to have a Silmaril set at the roots of the mountains. One to soar above the land, set into the sky, one below it, set into the rock of Arda, and one in the hand of the maker."

"And will your relatives agree with you about that?" Fëanor asked warily.

"It was agreed," Aulë said, in a low rumble like a rockfall. "Manwë himself has said it. Beleriand, and all things in Beleriand are neither in Middle-earth, nor under the hand of the Valar in the land of Aman. A third path, for the Elder Children of Ilúvatar."

"And will it be a path they will let us walk alone?" Fëanor asked.

"Perhaps," Aulë said, thoughtfully. "Perhaps. We will not walk it with you. Our time to fade is come, the time to retreat into the West and be one with that land which we made for ourselves. That is the song we sang. We are not made to make new songs."

"Are you not? You, who made the Dwarves, and made our Father change the song?" Fëanor laughed. "I am not clear that you, of all of them, are one to sing obediently only the music set for you."

Aulë smiled. "Yavanna and I both like surprises. And I have come to see that perhaps, after all, the Allfather sees no great harm in improvising a little around the theme."

"I too have had that thought," Fëanor said. "It has long grieved me that I met none of your children in Middle-earth. I wish I could learn more of them. Gimli's tales are fascinating, but they only cast a light that shows me all the things I do not know."

"The paths we made fail and fall at last," Aulë said. "But we are not the only path-makers in the wide world."

Fëanor shook his head. "What is that supposed to mean?" he demanded.

Aulë laughed at him. "Oh greatest of the Noldor, do I still need to teach you? Work it out."

"There is such a thing as being too subtle, you know," Fëanor said reprovingly. The Moon was well up now, and casting dark shadows across the rocks. He looked out west. "Not much here yet, save sand and stone. It will be a long walk, to the ship. A long time since I saw this land, but I can remember that much. I hope they'll wait."

"I shall not wait," Aulë said, and began to draw himself up tall again. "This is not the land of the Ainur. Farewell, for this time, Fëanáro." He stepped out massively, heading west towards the distant mountain peaks, and in three strides was gone.

Fëanor sighed and looked around. It must be at least a three-day walk to the Sea, for him, and there would be no supplies along the way, unless he stopped to fish. And then the fish would be raw, and there would be no firewood, in this land newly-risen from the Sea.

Still, it would be a good chance to remember the shape of the land, walking alone through it at any pace he wished, free to feel the air and watch the stars.

And perhaps time to put in place another small idea, too.

He picked up a small round white stone from the sand, and another, and another. He had collected seven of them and set them in a circle, when a set of great dark wings cut out the stars.

"Eru himself has set the land of Aman apart from the Round World," the Eagle said, once it had landed next to him.

"So I hear," Fëanor said. "I was sad not to see it done myself. A fascinating concept, I thought : the round world and the plane together yet forever apart."

"Forever apart," the Eagle said. It stared meaningfully with sharp dark eyes that glistened in the moonlight at the wide ring of white pebbles.

"This is not the land of Aman," Fëanor said to it. "Your lord has said it may be set aside for us. A third path, Aulë called it just now. You can't have a path that doesn't go anywhere. What would be the point?"

"The point might be the voyage," the Eagle said. It hopped, and prodded one of the stones more neatly into place with one huge talon.

"Your people voyage from world to world," Fëanor said. He spotted another pebble and picked it up. "From globe to plane to globe again, upon the winds, don't you? I've watched you fly."

"We watched you fly, too," the Eagle said. "Long ago, you flew, and burned."

Fëanor shook his head patiently. "No," he said. "I am an Elf, and I am alive. I can't fly in body across the oceans. I have to walk. Or sail, or row, or ride, or devise some other cunning plan... Never mind."

The ring of small white stones was complete. "The will of Eru..." the Eagle began.

Fëanor shook his head in frustration. "Why should Eru speak only with the Valar?" he said. "They are his friends and servants, we are his children. You don't have children then go away and never speak to them: why would you? We were born in Middle-earth beneath the stars... Show me your path, or keep out of the way, and I will make my own."

"I will show you the way across the winds," the Eagle said, in its harsh, croaking voice. It opened its mind, a mind of storms, mountains, and clouds, a world where land — all of it — was infinitesimally small, yet utterly sharp, and all of it, beneath.

"Oh!" Fëanor said, as he saw. "Oh, of course . How beautifully simple. How clever, too."

He drew a word upon his own palm, there in the moonlight, with the Eagle watching with its dark and clever eyes. The word hung there for a moment, gleaming, and then he blew on it gently: one puff, and it shimmered across the divide, sliding without a fuss into a world that was round. A smile crept across his face, almost without meaning it to be there, a wide delighted smile. He walked around the circle, once, twice, three times, binding word to place, and there it was: a path, for those who could see it.

He looked at it longingly for a moment. But no: the ship would be waiting for him, Nerdanel would wonder — and perhaps this time, she might come with him too. Anyway, he had three hungry days of walking ahead. Another time. There would be time.

He nodded politely to the Eagle, and set off, heading West towards the Sea.

. . . . . . .

It took three years to build the ships, even with Círdan's assistance and most of the carpenters, builders and woodworkers of Tirion turning their skills to the new art. With many of the Teleri helping, too. They came wandering over to the new shipyard on the estuary to watch, at first, to pass comments and to laugh. But that lasted only a handful of days. Before long, they were coming with tools, spare parts, rope and ideas, bringing lunch and offering helpful if sometimes contradictory advice on balance, rigging and loading.

When the fleet set off, most of the Teleri fleet went with it. Only to demonstrate that they could outsail it, of course. To show the Teleri ships were swifter, nimbler, more beautiful in every way, the jewels of the Sea.

Only for that.

And to carry a few extra bits and pieces that might be needed.

And to sing songs to Uinen to soothe the seas.

And to take the people who might want to go along but there might not be room for on the voyage. Some of them were kinsmen, after all, Sindar out of Doriath and Hithlum and the Falas.

As the Noldor fleet came in, rather clumsily, to beach upon the empty new shores, the white ships came gracefully behind them to anchor in neat lines, to make rude remarks about the Noldor and their sailing, and to send out many small swift gigs to thread through the Noldor fleet with practiced, flashing oars to help tow the new ships to the shore.

It would, after all, be a terrible waste, if their neighbours damaged their fine new ships that the Teleri had taught them how to build.

. . . . . .

"I can't quite believe that we're doing this all over again," Maglor said to Maedhros, shaking his head, as he gave his own three companies the signal to move up into the bare hills of West Beleriand and wait, and then turned to see where Celegorm's people had got to.

Fëanor and his people had already gone up ahead of them and were almost out of sight upon the bare rocky hillside.

"I know," Maedhros said, and he began to laugh. He did laugh, now, quite often, though not always at the things you expected him to.

"Not quite the same, this time," Fingon said grinning.

Maedhros stopped laughing and made a helpless gesture at him. "I don't." he said, and then abandoned whatever he had been going to say. "I think I prefer this version, " he said instead.

"Yes," Fingon replied, absolutely straight-faced. "It's not as dark. And, do you know, I think it might be very slightly warmer? Even though there's nothing burning."

"I hate you, Fingon," Maglor said laughing, as Maedhros flung an arm around Fingon's shoulder.

Eventually everyone who had come on the ships had found their way to the shore, and the assembled Noldor had arranged themselves along the bare and empty coast.

"Do you think this is going to work?" Elrond asked Maglor quietly. "It's such a huge place. Númenor took many years to build."

"It is my father's plan," Maglor said. Elrond raised his eyebrows, but Maglor smiled. "They don't always go wrong, honestly! And he has prepared for this very carefully. Think what Celebrimbor and his Gwaith-i-Mirdain were able to do."

Elrond opened his mouth, and then closed it again. "If you think it will work, I'll trust you," he said.

Celebrían put an arm around him. "Are you seeing something dark ahead?" she asked.

"No," Elrond said. "I am thinking of something dark behind. I am remembering what Beleriand was like, last time I saw it." He waved around at bare rock, sand and gravel. "This is a considerable improvement."

"Good heavens!" Bilbo said. "It looks dreary enough! I wouldn't care to live here myself, Maglor. Not that it wasn't impressive, seeing it come up out of the sea," he added hastily, "But it's so grey and empty and forlorn! The only colour is the water and the banners."

"It looks dead," Gimli said, looking around with a frown. He stamped once, heavily. "Nothing left here but old grey bones."

Legolas, beside him, laughed. "I never thought I'd see the day when you complained a place had too much rock and not enough life, Gimli!" he said. "It gives me hope! You're learning!"

"I should hope I am, after all these years, and after hearing so very many tales of trees!" Gimli said and snorted. "Though it seems these Noldor folk are inclined to be more fond of rock than you, Legolas. They don't seem much like proper Elves at all."

Maglor laughed. "We are improper Elves, Maedhros! I think we must take that as a compliment, coming from one of Durin's folk."

"And so shall I!" Legolas exclaimed.

"But still, this place seems grey to me," Gimli said. "Even by the standards of the Mountain. Erebor was not so grim and bare, even when we first returned there after the Dragon died."

"It's grey now," Elrond said. "It has known worse. I am glad you did not see it when it was black with ash and stinking of sulphur. Think of Sam's descriptions of Mordor, then add some dark woods of tangled malevolence, giant spiders, dragons and spirits of the malignant dead."

"Anyone would think you did not remember your youth fondly, Elrond!" Maglor said, and grinned at him.

Elrond laughed. "I do. But emphatically not for the giant spiders!" His face became grave again and he glanced at Celebrian. "I am not sure you should have come, Celebrían. You could go back to the ships..."

"Oh, don't be silly, Elrond!" Celebrían said. "Just because something bad happened to me just once doesn't mean I should shut myself away in safety forever! I shan't, I won't and there's no need to anyway. If you can take risks, then why not I?"

Elrond made a face. "Because it makes me wince? Oh, well, you'll make your own choice: you always did. I'll agree you do need some darkness if you're going to see the stars."

Celebrían took his hand. "Anyway, it's not the least bit dark here now. It's just a bit grey and bare and sorrowful."

"It won't be that for long," Lalwen said, coming up to join them with Círdan and a number of his Falathrim. Her hair was tied up, as if for battle, and there was a bold light in her eyes. "We're all ready at the southern end, Maedhros."

Maedhros nodded. "In that case, I think it is time," he said. "Where is Finrod? Oh, over there." He lifted his hand and signalled to Finrod, and to Galadriel. "We had best join our companies."

"We'll wait here, and see you later," Elrond said to Maglor.

"Good!" Maglor said. "There are some memories that will be much better left safely in the past. Come on, Elior." He started to climb the grey slope, up to where his companies were waiting.

"Well! Celebrían said brightly to Bilbo and Elrohir. "This all makes me feel delightfully young, and at the same time terribly old, because suddenly I seem to be just the same age as Elrond is, and I'm used to him being so much older. But here we are: both of us too young to be any use at all!"

Bilbo laughed. "In that case I'm the same age as Elrond too. There's a thing I thought I'd never say."

Elrohir grinned, and sat down on a huge boulder to open the pack he had been carrying. "Well, while the ancient and legendary ones get on with whatever they are doing, I suggest that we have lunch," he said.

"A good idea," Elrond said smiling. "But keep your sword to hand. This is not Valinor, nor Tol Eressëa."

Elrohir nodded seriously, and Gimli patted the small axe that he still kept upon his belt, as Legolas pulled out provisions from a bag.

"They wouldn't bring anything dangerous here though, surely. Would they?" Bilbo asked.

"They are bringing the land back out memory, Bilbo, not making it anew," Elrond told him. "Beleriand was never safe, even in its earliest days. It was part of Middle-earth, with all its perils and its terrors."

"Oh!" Bilbo said. He thought about it. "I gave my sword to Frodo, and he left it in the Shire," he said.

Elrohir looked sideways at him, and took a bite of bread and cheese. Then he slid a long knife in a sheath from his belt and offered Bilbo the hilt.

"Oh." Bilbo said again. Then he shrugged, took the knife and put it on his own belt. It was more than long enough to be a sword, for him. "Better safe than sorry. Thanks, Elrohir."

The harpsong came first, faintly to be heard from the nearer companies marching out into the hills, and then the distant singing began, thousands of strong voices lifting to the sky, building a spell of memory, reaching far back into time. Calling out to the rocks, the sand, the stones, and to the sea.

As the singing rang out through that quiet echoing land of stone, it changed. The rocky ground blurred into soil and soft green grass swept across it, growing longer in faint ripples, and then one by one, the trees stepped out of memory, shook themselves and lifted up their branches towards the midday sun.

Along the seashore, long white sandy beaches swept up across the rocks, making a faint burring sound as they settled into place. Twisted willows lifted up their heads beside a stream that suddenly began to flow clear and bright down through the rocks and out onto the sand, and as Bilbo turned in surprise to look at it, a fish leapt in a pool and made a spreading ring of ripples that shook the reflection of the gladdon-stems.

Small birds were singing in the grass as it swayed to a gentle wind. Sprays of small flowers with golden bells shook in the wind, as very gently, Beleriand, fair and perilous, was sung out of distant memory and began again to live.

. . . . . .

Three times three years of the Sun had passed, and the stars were fading high above over Alqualondë. In the east, a line of brilliant rose ran across the line of the horizon where the distant mass of Beleriand could barely be seen, outlined faint against the clear gold. Waves were hushing quietly along the shore, catching the growing light. It was cold but the air was still, and just above the tideline, a driftwood fire was still burning, blue flames dancing along the dark edges of the wood, almost invisible now in the growing light.

Finrod, in an old shirt with an ash-mark smudged upon the cuff, was sitting on a washed-up log, singing very softly, almost to himself, and Maglor was accompanying him on a small wooden harp, the frame plain without any decoration, but the voice of it clear and true.

Finrod missed a word, and laughed, and Maglor grinned and struck a bright jangle of notes from the harp.

"What did I expect!" he said. "Finrod and his terrible poetry! You can't even get to the end of the song!"

"That was the ninth song!" Finrod said holding up a hand as if to ward off the mockery and laughing. "Nine new songs in a night, sung right through to morning and you expect the ninth to come as easily as the first? Your standards are impossibly high!"

"You need more practice. You never know when you might need to battle a Necromancer!" Maglor put the harp down and stood up to stretch, looking out over a sea now shining brilliantly in a thousand shades of glittering flame, then turning to look south along a misty shore fading layered soft into fainter shades of orange-red.

A little inland, the faint shape of a horse was moving along the shore, dark against the pale misty loom of the hills behind.

A very tall horse, a black mare with a streaming mane and clever eyes that had allowed one person only to ride her, familiar out of a memory out of very long ago, yet clear as spring water.

On the mare's back was a rider, long dark hair braided down her back, wearing the plain unadorned clothes that are left for the returning dead outside the Halls of Mandos.

Maglor stood and looked, as still as if he had been turned to stone.

Finrod turned to see what he was looking at. "Oh!" he said softly.

"But," Maglor said. "But she chose not to return." He looked at Finrod, wild-eyed, his fingers clutching in his dark hair. "You said she'd chosen never to return."

"No. I said that I had asked after your wife, and she had not chosen to return, not yet. It can be a long while, for those who were taken living into Angband itself. You know that."

"I thought she would not speak with me," Maglor said, eyes fixed on the approaching horse and rider. "Did you know...?"

"Why would I know? I'm not the High King's eldest son any more. They wouldn't send to me . They'd send to Maedhros or Fingon or Fingolfin or your father, whoever it is who has been landed with the task now. Or to you, possibly, in which case it's probably lurking somewhere near that chaotic nightmare that Bregolien says you call a desk. I haven't even asked."

"I thought." Maglor said.

"You might have been wrong," Finrod said, smiling infuriatingly. "It would hardly be the first time. Go on, go and talk to her. If you don't mind, I'll borrow your harp while you do. I've thought of a new song."

. . . . . . .

In the willow-meads of Tasarinan, Galadriel and Celeborn walk with Fangorn and the Shepherds of the Trees, and there, sometimes in spring, Galadriel will dance with Fimbrethil the Ent-wife, Wand-limb the lighthearted, in glades of wild oats blowing among the forests of apple-trees, and around the glades stand Ents and trees of elm and ash and oak together, their arms uplifted in gladness.

In the East, the great mountains of the Ered Luin tower against the sky, gold and purple against the sunrise as they did in time distant beyond even the memory of Elrond. There the peoples of the Dwarves have gathered, a few at a time across the long years, family by family, along the hidden paths West of the Moon, East of the Sun to dwell in the Mountain that Aulë built for them. There, the hammers ring like bells, and the great halls are lit with lamps that sparkle on the clear water of the streams that run from mountain-spring to mountain-root.

Nearby dwell Caranthir and Celebrimbor, in a fair white city by the shores of Lake Helevorn, and beside the dark lake that reflects the sunlight on the mountain-peaks in the evening they have a great friendship with the Dwarves.

Amras and Amrod live close at hand, beside the silver river Gelion, and they ride up singing to the city by the lake to greet their brother and their nephew there. Sometimes Aredhel, the White Lady of the Noldor, rides with them, and sometimes she rides alone, ranging across the plains, for Aredhel has no single home, but visits all her kin in turn.

But Maedhros and Fingon dwell together in Hithlum among the golden mists of the Lake of Mithrim, and they ride south often through the high passes of the Ered Wethrin in a great company, singing, to visit friends and kinsmen by the pools of Ivrin, or the birchwoods of Arvernien, or in the harbours of Eglarest and Brithombar to take ship to visit their kin in Tol Eressëa and in the white city of Tirion upon the green hill of Túna, where Fingolfin is King.

In the ancient shore-city of Eglarest dwells Eldalótë and her husband Angrod, and many of the fair people of Finarfin, and they welcome the white ships of the Teleri and the grey ships of Círdan's Falathrim that come swooping across the blue waters from Tol Eressëa and from Aman.

But in the North, in Dorthonion reborn among the dark pine-trees is the home of Fëanor, the High King of all the Noldor, and he is of perilous mood, for sometimes he is bitterly angry, though at other times he is kind as sunlight and laughs like a joyful child.

With Fëanor are his sons Curufin and Celegorm, and Curufin and his father make new and wondrous things. But in the gorges of Nan Dungortheb, the land still remembers creatures strange and dark and terrible. Celegorm the Fair rides out to hunt, to keep them from wandering out to trouble the people of the land, and Nimloth of Doriath rides out North from her fair woods to hunt with him.

Nerdanel goes out into the snows of the far North and shapes the ice into figures wild and strange, and sometimes Fëanor travels with her with the Silmaril. He calls great lights of many colours into the sky and into the figures shaped by Nerdanel, and all who see them wonder at them.

And they say that even now, if you walk alone in the first mists of dawn when the the light catches in the mist and makes it bloom into light, you might hear the sound of Elf-horns blowing in the distance, or look up and see the Sun as a golden apple, driven by a woman in a chariot of flame.

Or when you wander in the woods by starlight, when you look up to see the stars of Elbereth framed in woven trees, you may hear far off the distant sound of clear voices singing.

Or if you look out across the heather hills in the silver light of the Moon, up towards the peaks where great stones stand like mighty castles formed of living rock towering against the sky, you may see a light high above, the flame of a lantern burning where no human lamp could ever be, and a path that was never there before, leading upward.

And then you should beware.

For Beleriand is fair indeed, but it is perilous. If you walk into the mist, or upon the mountainside to the land where Fëanor is King, you might not return at all, and if you do, it will not be unchanged.


End file.
